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THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


Bxj  STEPHEN  SMITH,  A.  M.,  M.  D.,  LL.  D. 

Commissioner  of  the  Metropolitan  Board    of  Health,  1868-1870; 
Commissioner  of  the  Board  of  Health  of  New  York,  1870-1875 


Published    by    FRANK     ALL  A  BEN 

Number  Three  West  Forty-Second  Street,  New  York 


Copyright,  1911,  by  Frank  Allaben 


BOSTON  COEEEGE  EffilBHIli 
CHESTNUT  HILL.  MASSL 


JDNIO'69 


406731 


^■T  p  ti^t  MBtmiY^  nf 


Inrmsin  Sriigmatt  Eaton 


\ 

V 


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V 


My  thanks  are  due  especially  to  Mr.  Frank 
Allaben  and  my  son,  Mr.  Sidney  Smith,  for  their 
service  in  carrying  this  book  through  the  press. 

Stephen  Smith. 


NOTE  BY   THE  PUBLISHER 

Y'HE  story  of  a  great  life-saving  social  revolution, 
the  mightiest  in  the  nineteenth  century  and  one 
of  the  most  momentous  in  the  nistory  of  civilization, 
is  told  here  for  the  first  time.  It  is  told  from  the 
standpoint  of  the  transformation  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  by  a  chief  actor  in  the  event. 

Only  by  forcing  ourselves  into  a  receptive  mood 
can  we  of  the  present  credit  the  half  of  what  is  set 
before  us  concerning  The  City  That  Was.  The 
shocked  imagination  rebels.  It  seeks  relief  in  assum- 
ing that  even  a  trained  expert,  a  contemporaneous 
witness  and  investigator  of  the  conditions  described, 
in  writing  after  they  have  passed  away,  unconsciously 
yields  to  the  historian's  temptation  to  throw  the  past 
into  dramatic  relief  by  starting  exaggerations. 

Dr.  Smith,  however,  leaves  us  no" room  for  doubt. 
The  appalling  chapter  in  which  he  lays  bare  the  New 
York  of  186^  is  a  contemporaneous  document.  It  is  a 
physician's  report  of  a  systematic  medical  inspection 
of  New  York  in  that  year,  as  delivered  before  a  Legis- 
lative Committee  a  few  months  later  by  the  very  phy- 
sician who  had  directed  the  inspection. 

Nevertheless,  The  City  That  Was  is  not  New  York 
alone.  She  is  but  a  type.  Her  condition,  with  varia- 
tions, may  be  multiplied,  during  the  early  years  of 
the  nineteenth  century,  by  the  total  of  the  cities, 
towns,  and  villages  in  the  world.  In  the  work  of 
regeneration  some  of  these  anticipated  her.  Others, 
including  all  throughout  the  territory  of  the  United 
States,  were  aroused  through  her  agitation  and  in- 
spired by  her  example. 

As  a  student  of  local  history,  the  writer  thought 
himself  familiar  with  the  many  phases  of  the  growth 
of  New  York;  but  the  condition  of  the  City  as  late 
as    the   period   of   our   Civil   War,   as   here   depicted. 


NOTE  BY  THE  PUBLISHER 


startled  him  as  might  a  revelation.  He  believes  that 
no  seriously  minded  man  or  woman  can  afford  to 
ignore  this  volume.  We  owe  it  to  ourselves  and  to 
one  another  fully  to  face  its  lesson. 

We  shall  be  shocked;  we  shall  be  filled  with  horror; 
but  accepting  the  city  that  now  is,  great  as  her  faults 
may  be,  with  a  new  gratitude,  we  shall  turn  with 
anointed  sympathy  and  understanding  to  any  earnest 
voice  that  pleads  for  the  city  that  should  be.  And, 
indeed,  other  volumes  which  Dr.  Smith  himself  has  in 
preparation,  as  suggestive  and  as  interesting  as  this 
one,  may  help  us  on  in  this  direction. 

FRANK    ALLABEN 


CONTENTS 


I 

A  Blind  Metropolis  and  Her  Dying  Children 

Healthy  or  Unhealthy:  Which?  —  Two  Centuries  and 
a  Half  Unhealthy  —  A  Plague-Stricken  Town  — 
Enormous  Sacrifice  of  Life 

II 

A  Great  Awakening  in  England 

The  Scourge  of  1849  —  A  Town  That  Was  Immune  — 
The  Word  Fitly  Spoken 

III 

The  Awakening  in  America 

Apathy  in  the  United  States  —  An  Incident  That 
Counted  —  A  Fever  Nest — The  Unknown  Owner 
—  Fear  of  Publicity  —  Agitation  for  Reform  — 
The  Citizens  Association  —  A  Health  Bill  —  Sani- 
tary Inspection  of  New  York  —  An  Anomaly  in 
Law  —  Introduction  of  an  Epoch-Making  Bill 

IV 

New  York,  the  Unclean 

Alarm  of  Medical  Men  —  A  Systematic  Investigation  — 
A  House-to-House  Inspection  —  The  Medical  Ex- 
perts—  Plan    of    Inspection  —  Each    Room    Exa- 


10  CONTENTS 


mined  —  Period  of  the  Inspection -^Distribution 
of  Population  —  Tenant-House  Packing  —  Avoid- 
able and  Inevitable  Disease  —  Filthy  Streets  — 
Street  Filth  and  Disease  —  Dead  Animals  — 
Filthy  Courts  and  Alleys  —  Cesspool  Abominations 

—  Unbelievable  Vileness  —  Special  Nuisances  — 
Cellar  Population:  Dens  of  Death  —  ^96  Persons 
Under  Ground  —  A  Visit  to  the  Cave-Dwellers  — 
Tenant-House  Population  —  Cat  Alley  —  Rag  Pick- 
ers Row  —  Tenant-House  Degeneration  —  The 
Rioters  —  Tenant -House  Rot  —  Tenant -House 
Cachexy  —  Prevailing  Diseases  —  Seeds  of^  Dis- 
ease    Uncontrolled  —  Where    Disease    Flourishes 

—  Smallpox  —  Smallpox  in  Tailored  Garments  — 
Typhus  Fever  —  Intestinal  Affections  —  Living 
at  a  Sewer's  Mouth — The  Normal  Death-Rate  — 
Death-Rate  of  New  York  —  New  York,  London, 
and  Liverpool  Compared  —  Constant  Sickness  — 
Where  the  Death  Pressure  Is  Greatest  —  Some 
Scapegoats:  Foreign  Immigration  —  The  Floating 
Population  —  Can  the  Causes  of  Disease  Be  Re- 
moved?—  Improvements    During    the    Inspection 

—  How  to  Improve  the  People  —  Can  Diseases  Be 
Prevented?  —  Can  Populous  Towns  Be  Improved? 

—  Cleanliness  Preserves  from  Epidemics  —  Im- 
portance of  Sanitary  Government  —  The  Entire 
Country  Concerned  —  Smallpox  in  a  Hotel  Bed- 
room—  New  York  Inoculates  the  Nation  —  In- 
efficiency of  Health  Organizations  —  Without 
Sanitary  Government  —  The  City  Inspector's  De- 
partment —  Sanitary  Inspection  —  Inspection  Must 
Be  Thorough  —  The  Remedy  —  An  Efficient  Health 
Board 

V 
Victory 
Effect  of  the  Hearing  —  Triumph  at  Last  — The  Reform 
National  in  Its  Results 


CONTENTS  11 


VI 

The  Legal  Work  of  Dorman  Bridgeman  Eaton 

Unrecognized  Pioneers  —  A  Constructive  Reformer  — 
Character  of  Previous  Agitation  —  Incompetent 
Health  Officers  —  Reform  Movement  Born  — 
The  Right  Man  —  A  Board  with  Extraordi- 
nary Powers  —  The  Fight  for  the  Bill  —  A 
Law  Enacted  and  Sustained  —  The  Regeneration 
of  New  York  —  Epidemics  Checked  —  Sanitation 
■  in  Other  Cities  —  Reorganization  of  the  Fire  De- 
partment—  Creation  of  a  Dock  Department  — 
Reform  of  the  Police  Judiciary  —  Mental  Traits  of 
Dorman  B.  Eaton 

VII 

The  Occult  Power  of  Filth 

Filth  Diseases  —  The  Scheme  of  Sanitation  Changed  — 
T/ie  Mystery  of  Infection  —  How  Infection  Works 

—  What  the  Germ  Is  —  The  Function  of  Bacteria 

—  Bacteria  for  Every  Condition  —  The  Deadly 
Tubercle  Bacillus  —  How  Bacteria  Affect  the  Body 

—  The  Toxin  Secreted  —  Bacteria  Aim  to  Destroy 
the  Body  —  Man's  Defenses  —  Destroy  the  Bacte- 
ria —  The  Value  of  Germicides 

VIII 

A  Closing  Word 

Cleanliness  Next  to  Godliness  —  Invisible  Agencies  in 
Filth  —  A  Higher  Civilization 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Public  School  Adjoining  Slaughter-Pen, 

1865 .Frontispiece 

Plan  of  Rookery  Holding  1000  Persons 60 

A  Crowded  Section  of  the  City 61 

A  Tenant-House  Cul-de-Sac  Near  City  Hall  ....  70 

Gul-de-Sac  Near  Slaughter-House  and  Stables.  71 

Plan  of  Cellar  —  "Worse  Than  a  Stygian  Pit"  73 

Slaughter-Pens  in  Rear  of  Tenant-Houses  .....  77 

Sixth  Street  Cattle  Market,  1865 78 

Region  of  Hide-Curing,  Fat-Gathering,  etc 79 

Region    of    Bone-Boiling    and    Swill-Milk    Nui- 
sances      80 

Plan  of  Rookery  Between  Broadway  and  Bowery     83 

Plan  of  Cellar  Occupied  by  Two  Families 85 

Plan    Showing    Rear    Tenant-Houses    Near    a 

Stable 89 

Rivington   Place,    1865 92 

Gotham  Court,  Cherry  Street,  1865 95 

Transverse    Sectional    Elevation    of    Gotham 

Court  . , . , 96 

"The  Great  Eastern" 98 

A  Perpetual  Fever-Nest  106 

Region  of  Smallpox  and  Typhus  Fever Ill 

Plan  of  Fever-Nest,  East  17th  Street 114 


14  ILLUSTRATIONS 


Bird's-Eye  View  of  Fever-Nest  Near  Fifth  Ave- 
nue     115 

Plan  of  Monroe  Street  Fever-Nest 117 

A  Sixth  Ward  Fever-Nest  126 

Plan  of  Typical  Fever-Nest,  1865 130 

Plan  of  Rear  Gul-de-Sac   134 

Fever-Breeding  Structure  Near  Central  Park  . .   139 
Stagnant  Water,  Central  Park  West    148 


T 

A  Blind  Metropolis  and  Her  Dying  Children 


GREAT  problem  was  left  for  the 
first  civilized  inhabitants  of  New 
York  to  determine.  Nature  had 
made  ample  provision  for  the 
metropolis  of  the  western  hemi- 
sphere. But  two  possibilities 
were  attached  to  its  occupation 

by  man  —  it  could  be  healthy  or  unhealthy,  at 

the  option  of  the  people. 

THE  conditions  which  made  for  health  were: 
two  large  rivers  of  pure  water,  from  the 
mountains  and  the  sea,  flushed  its  shores, 
carrying  the  outflow  of  its  waste  far  away  sea- 
ward; its  soil  could  be  thoroughly  drained;  its 

sev/erage  could  be  so 

Healthy  or  Unhealthy:       constructed  as  to  con- 

Which?  vey    to     the    sea     all 

forms  of  domestic 
waste  and  surface  filth;  its  southern  exposure 
towards  the  ocean  insured  sunlight  and  sea 
breezes;  its  inland  situation  supplied  to  its 
atmosphere  the  life-giving  virtues  of  abundant 
vegetation;  the  climate  was  temperate. 


(17) 


18  THE  CITY  THAT   WAS 


The  conditions  which  made  for  unhealthiness 
were:  large  areas  of  sodden  marsh  lands;  a 
rock  formation  of  shale,  having  a  dip  of  the 
strata,  nearly  perpendicular,  admitting  the  flow 
of  surface  water  to  great  depths,  thus  poisoning 
springs  and  wells;  numerous  streams  flowing 
into  the  rivers;  large  ponds  of  stagnant  water; 
fierce  summer  heat. 

CROM  the  year  1622  to  the  year  1866,  a  period 
*  of  two  hundred  and  forty-four  years,  the 
people  elected  that  the  city  shoMld  be  un- 
healthy. The  land  was  practically  undrained; 
the    drinking   water   was   from   shallow   wells, 

befouled  by   street,   stable. 

Two  Centuries  and  privy,  and  other  filth;  there 

a  Half  Unhealthy    were  no  adequate  sewers  to 

remove  the  accumulating 
waste;  the  streets  were  the  receptacles  of  gar- 
bage; offensive  trades  were  located  among  the 
dwellings;  the  natural  water  courses  and  springs 
were  obstructed  in  the  construction  of  streets 
and  dwellings,  thus  causing  soakage  of  large 
areas  of  land,  and  stagnant  pools  of  polluted 
water. 

Later,  in  these  centuries  of  neglect  of  sanitary 
precautions,  came  the  immigrants  from  every 
nation  of  the  world,  representing  for  the  most 
part  the  poorest  and  most  ignorant  class  of  their 
respective  nationalities.  This  influx  of  people 
led  to  the  construction  of  the  tenement  house  by 


A  BLIND  METROPOLIS  19 


landowners,  whose  aim  was  to  build  so  as  to 
incur  the  least  possible  expense  and  accommo- 
date the  greatest  possible  number.  In  dark, 
unventilated,  uninhabitable  structures  these 
wretched,  persecuted  people  were  herded  to- 
gether, in  cellars  and  garrets,  as  well  as  in  the 
body  of  the  building,  until  New  York  had  the 
largest  population  to  a  square  acre  of  any  civ- 
ilized city. 

The  people  had  not  only  chosen  to  conserve 
all  the  natural  conditions  unfavorable  to  health, 
but  had  steadil}^  added  unhygienic  factors  in 
their  methods  of  developing  the  city. 

rE  result  was  inevitable.     New  York  grad- 
ually became   the  natural  home  of   every 
variety  of  contagious  disease,  and  the  fa- 
vorite resort  of  foreign  pestilences.     Smallpox, 
scarlet  fever,  measles,  diphtheria,  were  domestic 

pestilences  with  which  the 
A  Plague-Stricken     people    were    so    familiar 
Town  that   they   regarded   them 

as  necessary  features  of 
childhood.  Malarial  fevers,  caused  by  the  mos- 
quitoes bred  in  the  marshes,  which  were  perfect 
culture-beds,  were  regularly  announced  in  the 
autumnal  months  as  having  appeared  with  their 
"usual  severity."  The  "White  Plague,"  or  con- 
sumption, was  the  common  inheritance  of  the 
poor  and  rich  alike. 

With   the  immigrant,   came   typhus   and   ty- 


20  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

phoid  fevers,  which  resistlessly  swept  through 
the  tenement  houses,  decimating  the  poverty- 
stricken  tenants.  At  intervals,  the  great  oriental 
plague,  Asiatic  cholera,  swooped  down  upon  the 
city  with  fatal  energy  and  gathered  its  enormous 
harvest  of  dead.  Even  "Yellow  Fever,"  the  great 
pestilence  of  the  tropics,  made  occasional  incur- 
sions and  found  a  most  congenial  field  for  its 
operations. 

FAILURE    to   improve    the    unhealthy    condi- 
tions of  the  city,  and  the  tendency  to  aggra- 
vate them  JDy  a  large  increase  of  the  tene- 
ment-house population,  offensive  trades,  accu- 
mulations of  domestic  waste,  and  the  filth  of 

streets,  stables,  and  privy 
Enormous  Sacrifice    pits,  then  universal,  caused 
of  Life  an   enormous   sacrifice    of 

life,  especially  among  chil- 
dren. This  fact  is  strikingly  illustrated  by  the 
following  comparison  of  figures  taken  from  the 
official  records. 

The  standard  ratio  of  deaths  to  the  total  liv- 
ing in  a  community,  where  the  death-rate  is 
normal  under  proper  sanitary  conditions,  has 
been  fixed  by  competent  authority  at  about  15 
in  1,000  of  population.  The  death-rate  in  New 
York,  in  the  five  years  preceding  1866,  averaged 
38  in  1,000  population,  which  is  23  in  excess  of 
the  normal  standard  of  15  in  the  1,000.  In  a  city 
with  a  population   of  1,000,000,   the   estimated 


A  BLIND  METROPOLIS  21 


population  of  New  York  in  1865,  a  death-rate 
of  38  in  the  1,000  means  23,000  deaths  annually 
from  preventable  diseases. 

Mortality  statistics  computed  on  a  scale  of 
forty  years,  the  period  during  which  New  York 
has  been  under  an  intelligent  sanitary  govern- 
ment, still  more  impressively  show  the  former 
waste  of  life  through  municipal  neglect  of  the 
elementary  principles  of  public  hygiene.  The 
lesson  which  these  figures  teach  should  be  en- 
graven on  the  memory  of  every  man,  woman, 
and  child.  Our  authority  is  the  annual  report 
of  the  Department  of  Health  of  the  City  of  New 
York,  for  the  year  1908,  in  which  appears  the 
following  statement. 

"A  remarkable  decrease  in  the  death-rate  has 
taken  place  within  the  past  forty  years,  a  de- 
crease comparing  each  decennial  rate  with  the 
one  immediately  preceding  represented  by 
seven,  seven,  and  eighteen  per  cent  respectively, 
and  comparing  that  of  the  first  decennium  with 
the  individual  year  under  review,  a  decrease  of 
forty-seven  per  cent." 


II 

A  Great  Awakening  in  England 


HOLERA   was    approaching   the 

shores  of  England.     The  alarm 

of  the  people  was  intense.    The 

enormous   devastations  of  that 

pestilence  on  its  first  and  only 

previous  visit  to  that  country,  in 

1832,  were  vividly  recalled  by 

the  elder  people.    The  only  known  preventive 

measures  were  "flight,  fasting,  and  prayer."  As 

the  pestilence  was  believed  to  be 

The  Scourge   ^  "visitation  of  God"  on  account 

of  18^9       Qf   ^j^g   gjjjg   q£   Ijjg   people,   the 

clergy  petitioned  the  Prime  Min- 
ister to  proclaim  a  day  of  "fasting  and  prayer," 
with  many  expressions  of  sorrow  at  the  prevail- 
ing national  vices  which  had  finally  provoked 
the  wrath  of  the  Almighty.  The  Prime  Minister 
replied  in  substance  as  follows: 

"Do  works  meet  for  repentance.  First  make 
your  homes  and  their  surroundings  clean  and 
wholesome;  then  you  may  with  propriety  ask 
Almighty  God  to  bless  your  efforts  at  protection 
against  the  approaching  epidemic." 

This  response  of  the  highest  official  of  the 


(^i)} 


26  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


Kingdom  to  the  usually  humble  and  devout  peti- 
tion of  the  clergy,  when  the  people  were  threat- 
ened with  an  epidemic,  was  received  with 
profound  astonishment  by  the  religious  classes, 
with  ridicule  by  the  masses  of  the  people,  but 
with  commendation  by  sanitarians.  The  popu- 
lar agitation  was  great.  The  clergy  protested 
with  solemn  asseverations  their  belief  that  pes- 
tilences were  always  indications  that  national 
sins  had  become  intolerable  to  the  Almighty, 
and  only  fastings  and  prayers  could  appease 
His  wrath. 

The  people  at  large  gave  no  heed  either  to  the 
clergy's  admonition  to  fast  and  pray,  or  to  the 
Prime  Minister's  advice  to  clean  their  homes 
and  their  surroundings;  but,  with  their  usual 
disregard  of  the  domestic  diseases  with  which 
they  were  constantly  familiar,  gave  no  thought 
to  approaching  danger.  But  the  sanitarians 
very  earnestly  urged  the  people  of  their  respect- 
ive localities  to  act  upon  the  advice  of  the 
Prime  Minister,  assuring  them  that  cholera  was 
a  disease  which  prevailed  more  generally  and 
severely  in  localities  and  homes  where  there 
was  the  greatest  amount  of  "filth." 

The  epidemic  of  1849  came  and  went  with  its 
apparent  usual  great  disturbances  of  the  people. 
"Flight"  and  "fasting  and  prayers"  had  their 
natural  results,  the  former  being  effectual  when 
vmdertaken  in  time,  and  the  latter  without  sen- 
sible influence  over  the  mortuary  records. 


A   GREAT   AWAKENING    IN   E:^:GLA^D 


THEN  the  net  results  of  this  visitation  of 
cholera  were  ofticially  determined  by 
the  Registrar  General,  one  fact  attracted 
wide  attention  and  created  a  profound  and 
lasting  impression  on  the  minds  of  the  common 
people.  A  town  in  the  interior 
Can  Diseases  ^^  England  reported  no  case 
Be  Prevented?  ^^  cholera,  though  the  epi- 
demic had  prevailed  with  great 
virulence  in  the  communities  surrounding  it. 

On  inquiry  as  to  the  cause  of  this  remarkable 
feature  of  a  pestilence  that  hitherto  had  shown 
no  respect  for  persons  or  localities,  it  was 
learned  that  certain  citizens  of  this  town  were 
deeply  impressed  with  the  reasonableness  of  the 
Prime  Minister's  suggestions,  and  had  organized 
and  taken  action  accordingly.  Volunteer  com- 
mittees composed  of  the  leading  men  and  women 
were  selected.  One  was  to  secure  thorough 
cleaning  of  the  streets  and  public  places;  an- 
other was  to  cause  an  inspection  of  every  resi- 
dence and  its  surroundings  and  secure  complete 
cleanliness;  a  third  w^as  to  obtain  reports  of  all 
cases  of  sickness  and  require  immediate  isola- 
tion and  treatment  when  there  was  the  slightest 
symptom  of  cholera. 

This  town  had  its  "fastings  and  prayers,"  but 
not  until  its  citizens  had  done  works  meet  for 
repentance;  and  then  it  asked  the  divine  bless- 
ing on  its  efforts  to  protect  itself  —  and  its 
prayers  were  abundantly  answered. 


28  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

But  there  was  another  phase  of  this  place's 
experience  not  less  impressive  than  its  escape 
from  cholera.  There  was  a  great  diminution  of 
such  diseases  as  diphtheria,  typhoid,  erysipelas, 
scarlet  fever,  measles,  and  other  low  forms  of 
sickness,  so  fatal  in  the  homes  of  the  poor,  dur- 
ing the  period  that  the  citizens  exercised  so 
much  care  in  securing  cleanliness. 

ii  A     WORD    fitly    spoken    is    like    apples    of 
i\     gold    in    pictures    of    silver."      A    word 
fitly    spoken    broke    the    spell    of    cen- 
turies,   and    completel}^   revolutionized   human 
history.     That  word  was  spoken,  not  at  the  sug- 
gestion of  science,  nor  by  a 
The  Word  Fitly       scientist,  but,  at  the  dictation 
Spoken  ^^  coinnion  sense,  by  a  lay- 

man who  happened  to  be  in 
authority.  It  was  a  plain,  simple  word,  which 
was  understood  by  the  people  and  which  ap- 
pealed to  their  coixuTLon  sense. 

A  new  era  now  dawned  upon  the  domestic  life 
of  the  English  people.  Ever}^  household  learned 
that  cleanliness  had  not  only  saved  a  town  from 
a  visitation  of  cholera,  but  had  reduced  the 
contagious  and  infectious  diseases  always  pres- 
ent in  their  homes.  The  Health  Officer  of  Eng- 
land gave  tremendous  force  to  the  revelation 
that  had  been  made  by  officially  characterizing 
and  classifying  cholera  and  the  whole  brood  of 
domestic  scourges  as  "filth  diseases."    This  was 


A   GREAT   AWAKENING   IN   ENGLAND  29 

a  most  happy  term,  because  it  suggested  not 
only  the  source  of  these  diseases,  but  the  simple 
and  effectual  remedy  that  every  householder 
could  apply.  It  became  popular  in  the  sanitary 
literature  of  the  period,  and  thus  permeated  all 
classes,  until  the  most  humble  family  knew  its 
import  and  complied  with  its  suggestion. 

The  next  visitation  of  cholera  to  England  was 
met  by  the  simple  remedy  of  domestic  and  civic 
cleanliness;  and  so  manifestly  effectual  was  this 
measure  that  the  pestilence  lost  its  former  ter- 
rors. But  the  great  and  lasting  gain  to  the  peo- 
ple, which  grew  out  of  the  original  proclama- 
tion of  the  Prime  Minister  that  cleanliness  of  the 
home  and  its  surroundings  was  the  best  prevent- 
ive of  cholera,  was  the  discovery  of  the  fact  that 
nearly  all  diseases  which  afflict  the  individual 
family,  and  in  a  larger  sense  the  whole  commu- 
nity, have  their  origin  in  or  are  intensified  by 
decomposing  waste  matter,  the  "filth"  of  the 
sanitarian,  in  and  around  their  homes. 

So  profoundly  impressed  with  this  fact  were 
the  laboring  classes,  and  so  earnest  did  they  be- 
come in  their  zeal  for  sanitation,  that  sanitary 
measures  entered  into  the  political  campaign. 
On  one  occasion  a  prominent  candidate  was  so 
disturbed  by  the  numerous  inquiries  which  the 
audience  made  as  to  his  views  in  relation  to 
current  questions  of  local  sanitation,  that  he 
cried  out  in  despair,  "Sanitas  sanitatiim,  et  om- 
nia samtas!" 


Ill 

The  Awakening  in  America 


Apathy  in  the 
United  States 


URING  the  score  of  years  that  the 
great  awakening  of  the  people 
of  England  to  the  value  of  clean- 
liness of  the  individual,  the 
home,  and  the  municipality,  as 
the  true  remedial  measure 
against  foreign  as  well  as  do- 
mestic pestilences  was  in  progress,  extending 
from  1846  to  1866,  the  people  of  the  United 
States  remained  profoundly 
apathetic  in  relation  to  ail 
questions  of  improvement  of 
the  public  health  and  the  pre- 
vention of  epidemics.  Cholera  ravaged  their 
cities  in  1849,  and  again  in  1854,  without  meet- 
ing other  obstruction  than  the  occasional  fumes 
of  sulphur.  Days  of  fasting  and  prayer  were 
religiously  observed;  but,  for  the  most  part,  the 
terror-stricken  people  fled  to  the  country  to 
escape  what  they  believed  to  be  inevitable  death 
if  they  remained  in  their  town  homes. 

The  object  lesson  which  the  people  of  Eng- 
land had  learned  from  the  experience  of  one 
town,  and  had  so  successfully  applied  in  several 


(33) 


34  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

visitations  of  epidemics,  was  known  to  a  few 
students  of  sanitary  science  and  administration 
in  different  parts  of  this  country,  and  efforts 
had  been  made  by  them  from  time  to  time  to 
awaken  public  interest  in  sanitation  of  the  home 
and  the  municipalit}^;  but  very  little  progress 
was  made.  A  few  cities  had  health  organiza- 
tions, which  for  the  most  part  w^ere  devoted  to 
political  schemes  and  purposes,  with  no  pre- 
tense to  knowledge  of  the  objects  or  methods 
of  sanitation. 

AS  the  simple  suggestion  of  the  Prime  Minis- 
^ter,  that  cleanliness  of  the  home  and  its  sur- 
roundings was  the  best  measure  of  protec- 
tion   against   cholera,    contained    the    germ    of 
practical  sanitary  reform  in  England,  so  an  in- 
cident in  the  writer's  experience 
An  Incident      became  the  potential  force  that 
That  Counted  gave  to  New  York  a  most  com- 
plete system  of  health  laws  and 
ordinances,  and  an  efficient  administrative  de- 
partment of  health.      In  a  larger  sense  it  may 
with  justice  be  claimed  that  this  incident  con- 
tained the  germ  of  health  reform  that  has  given 
to  this  entire  country  the  most  perfect  system 
of  municipal,  state,  and  national  health  adminis- 
tration in  the  civilized  world. 

The  incident  referred  to  occurred  in  the  fifties 
of  the  last  century.  New  York  was  in  the  grip 
of  the  deadly  typhus.  This  was  sometimes  called 


THE  AWAKENING  IN  AMERICA  35 

the  "Spotted  Fever,"  from  the  dark  spots  which 
appeared  on  the  body  of  its  victims,  and  also 
"Emigrant  Fever,"  because  it  was  brought  to 
this  country  by  the  immigrants,  especially  by 
those  who  came  from  Ireland.  Indeed,  the  Irish 
immigrants  suifered  so  generally  and  severely 
that  the  disease  was  sometimes  called  the  "Irish 
Fever."  Immigration  from  Ireland  was  at  that 
time  at  its  flood,  and  the  typhus  was  so  prevalent 
among  these  poverty-stricken  people  that  the 
hospitals  were  overcrowded  by  them,  and  large 
numbers  were  treated  in  tents,  both  on  Black- 
well's  Island  and  at  the  quarantine  grounds  on 
Staten  Island.  / 

Having  completed  a  two  years'  term  of  service 
on  the  interne  medical  staff  of  Bellevue  Hospi- 
tal, where  large  numbers  of  typhus  cases  were 
treated,  I  was  placed  in  charge  of  the  tents  on 
Blackwell's  Island  by  the  Commissioners  of 
Charities.  Soon  after  entering  upon  the  service, 
I  noticed  that  patients  were  continually  admit- 
ted from  a  single  building  in  East  Twenty-sec- 
ond Street. 

f /[PRESSED  with  the  importance  of  closing 
this  fever-nest,  I  visited  the  tenement,  and 
was  not  surprised  at  the  large  number  of  cases 
of  fever  which  it  furnished  our  hospital.  It  is 
difficult  to  describe  the  scene  that  the  interior 
of  the  house  presented  to  the  visitor.  The 
building  was  in  an  extreme  state  of  dilapidation 


36  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


generally;  the  doors  and  windows  were  broken; 
the  cellar  was  partly  filled  with  filthy 
A  Fever     sewage;  the  floors  were  littered  with 
Nest       decomposing  straw,  which  the  occu- 
pants    used     for     bedding;      every 
available    place,    from    cellar    to    garret,    was 
crowded  with  immigrants  —  men,  women,  and 
children.     The  whole  establishment  was  reek- 
ing with  filth,  and  the  atmosphere  was  heavy 
v>^ith  the  sickening  odor  of  the  deadly  typhus, 
w^liich  reigned  supreme  in  every  room. 

The  necessity  of  immediately  closing  this 
house  to  further  occupation  by  immigrants,  until 
it  was  thoroughly  cleansed  and  made  decently 
habitable,  was  imperative,  and  I  made  inquiries 
for  the  responsible  owner.  I  found  that  the 
house  was  never  visited  by  anyone  who  claimed 
to  be  either  agent  or  owaier;  but  that  it  was  the 
resort  of  vagrants,  especially  of  the  most  recent 
and  destitute  immigrants;  that  they  came  and 
went  without  let  or  hindrance,  generally  remain- 
ing until  attacked  by  the  prevailing  epidemic  of 
fever,  when  they  were  removed  to  the  fever 
hospital. 

I%FTER  considerable  inquiry  in  the  neighbor^ 
^  s  hood  I  found  a  person  v^dio  w^as  the  real 
agent  of  the  landlord;  but  no  other  informa- 
tion could  be  obtained  than  that  the  owner  took 
no  interest  in  the  property,  and  that  the  agent 
was  under  instructions  not  to  reveal  the  owner's 


THE  AWAKENING  IN  AMERICA  37 


name.     A  suggestion  to  this  agent,  to  have  the 

house  vacated  and  put  in  good 

The  Unknown       condition     for     tenants,     was 

Owner  refused  with  a  contemptuous 

remark  as  to  the  absurdity  of 

furnishing  such  vagrants  and  immigrants  better 

quarters  in  which  to  live. 

As  there  was  no  Health  Department  to  which 
an  appeal  could  be  made,  the  Metropolitan  Po- 
lice Department  was  visited  and  the  matter  laid 
before  its  president,  Mr.  Acton.  He  directed  the 
secretary,  Mr.  Hawley,  a  lawyer,  to  examine  the 
health  laws  and  ordinances  to  determine  what 
measures  were  in  the  power  of  the  police  to  en- 
force. A  search  was  made,  and  the  result  was 
that  neither  law  nor  ordinance  under  which  the 
police  could  take  action  was  found.  Mr.  Acton 
advised  that  the  tax  lists  be  examined,  to  find 
who  paid  taxes  on  the  property,  and  thus  dis- 
cover the  responsible  party  to  its  ownership,  and 
then  that  appeal  be  made  directly  to  him 
to  authorize  the  necessary  improvements.  An 
examination  of  the  tax  list  revealed  that  the 
owner  was  a  wealthy  man,  living  in  an  aristo- 
cratic neighborhood,  a  member  of  one  of  the 
most  popular  churches  of  the  city. 

The  condition  of  his  tenement  house  was 
brought  to  his  attention,  and  its  menace  to  the 
public  health  as  a  fruitful  fever  nest  was  ex- 
plained. He  was  very  angry  at  what  he  declared 
was  an  interference  with  the  management  of  his 


38  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


suSj^jisinsasBffusiiS^s 


property,  and  asserted,  in  the  most  emphatic 
manner,  that  as  the  house  yielded  him  no  rent, 
he  would  not  expend  a  dollar  for  the  benefit  of 
the  miserable  creatures  who  had  so  wrecked  the 
building. 

With  the  failure  of  this  appeal  to  the  owner, 
I  had  exhausted,  apparently,  every  legal  and 
moral  means  of  abating  a  nuisance  dangerous 
to  life  and  detrimental  to  health. 

IN  this  extremity  I  visited  the  office  of  the  Eve- 
ning Post  and  explained  the  matter  to  Mr. 
William  Cullen  Bryant,  then  editor  of  that 
newspaper.      He  was  at  once  interested  in  the 
failure  of  the  power  of  the  City  Government  to 
remedy  such  a  flagrant  evil.     In  the 
Fear  of       absence  of  laws  and  ordinances,  Mr. 
Publicity     Bryant  proposed  to  make   the   case 
public  in  all  of  its  details,  and  for  that 
purpose  suggested  that  the  police  should  cause 
the  arrest  of  the  delinquent  owner,  and  he  would 
send  a  reporter  to  make  notes  of  the  case.     A 
charge  was  made  against  the  landlord,  and  he 
was  required  to  appear  at  the  Jefferson  Market 
Court.    On  entering  the  court  he  was  confronted 
by  the  reporter,  pad  and  pencil  in  hand,  who 
pressed  him  with  questions  as  to  his  tenement 
house. 

Greatly  alarmed  at  his  situation,  the  owner 
inquired  as  to  the  purpose  of  the  reporter,  and 
was  informed  that  Mr.  Bryant  intended  to  pub- 


THE  AWAKENING  IN  AMERICA  B9 


lish  the  proceedings  of  the  court  in  the  Evening 
Post,  and  to  expose  his  maintenance  of  a  fever 
nest  of  the  worst  description.  He  begged  that 
no  further  proceedings  be  taken,  and  promised 
the  court  that  he  would  immediately  make  all 
necessary  improvements.  He  promptly  vacated 
the  house,  and  made  such  a  thorough  reconstruc- 
tion of  the  entire  establishment  that  it  became 
one  of  the  most  attractive  tenements  in  that  East 
Side  district.  For  many  years  that  house  con- 
tinued to  be  entirely  free  from  the  ordinary  con- 
tagious diseases  of  the  tenement  houses  of  the 
city.  It  is  an  interesting  fact  that  the  landlord 
subsequently  thanked  the  writer  for  having  com- 
pelled him  to  improve  his  tenement  house;  for 
he  had  secured  first-class  tenants  who  paid  him 
high  rents. 

HIS  incident  came  to  the  attention  of  several 
prominent  citizens,  physicians,  lawyers,  and 
clergymen,    who    became    profoundly    im- 
pressed with  the  revelation  that  there  were  no 
laws  under  which  such  a  glaring  violation  of  the 
simplest  principles  of  health,  and 
Agitation  for     ^^en  of  common  decency,  could 
Reform         ^^  ^^  once  corrected. 

For  many  years  there  had  been 
a  growing  sentiment  in  favor  of  a  reform  of  our 
health  regulations,  stimulated  by  the  writings  of 
Dr.  John  H.  Griscom,  Dr.  Joseph  M.  Smith,  Dr. 
Elisha  Harris,  and  others,  and  the  Academy  of 


^0  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

Medicine  had  occasionally  passed  resolutions  fa- 
voring adequate  health  laws;  but  no  results  had 
been  secured. 

It  was  now  resolved  to  organize  a  society 
devoted  expressly  to  sanitary  reform,  and  the 
"Sanitary  Association"  came  into  existence.  For 
several  years  this  body  annually  introduced  a 
health  bill  into  the  Legislature,  but  the  measure 
was  regularly  defeated  through  the  active  oppo- 
sition of  the  City  Inspector,  whose  office  would 
be  abolished  if  the  bill  became  a  law. 

IN  the  early  sixties  the  famous  "Citizens  Asso- 
ciation" was  organized,  with  Peter  Cooper 
as  President,  and  a  membership  of  one  hun- 
dred of  the  most  prominent  citizens.     This  was 
in  the  days  of  the  Tweed  regime,  and  at  a  period 
when  the  City  Government  was 
The  Citizens     ^^^*   completely   in   his   power. 
Association       ^^^  ^^J^^*^   ^^  *^^   Association 
were  reform  in  all  branches  of 
the  Municipal   Government,   the  promotion  of 
wise  legislation,  and  the  defeat  of  all  attempts 
to  subordinate  the  city  to  the  schemes  for  con- 
trol by  Tweed  and  the  coterie  of  politicians  who 
were  under  his  directions. 

The  friends  of  sanitary  reform  decided  to  at- 
tempt to  secure  proper  legislation  through  the 
Citizens  Association.  The  application,  by  a  dele- 
gation, for  the  aid  of  this  Association  was  well 
received  and  a  plan  of  procedure  adopted.  The 


THE  AWAKENING  IN  AMERICA  41 

secretary  of  the  Citizens  Association,  Mr.  Na- 
thaniel Sands,  had  been  a  member  of  the  Sani- 
tary Association,  and  as  an  enthusiastic  sanita- 
rian had  been  disappointed  at  its  repeated  fail- 
ure to  secure  legislation.  At  his  suggestion,  it 
was  decided  to  create  two  committeesj  one  on 
health  and  another  on  law,  and  through  these 
agencies  to  have  the  Citizens  Association  accom- 
plish its  work.  The  first  committee  even- 
tually came  under  my  direction,  while  the  sec- 
ond was  directed  by  Dorman  B.  Eaton,  Esq. 

In  the  Committee  on  Public  Health  were 
many  of  the  more  prominent  medical  men  of 
that  period,  as  Dr.  Valentine  Mott,  Dr.  Joseph 
M.  Smith,  Dr.  James  R.  Wood,  Prof.  John  W. 
Draper,  Dr.  Willard  Parker,  Dr.  Isaac  E.  Taylor. 
The  Committee  on  Law  was  equally  distin- 
guished for  its  membership,  having  on  its  list 
the  names  of  William  M.  Evarts,  Charles  Tracy, 
D.  B.  Siiliman. 

IT  was  determined,  as  a  preliminary  step,  to 
prepare  a  "Health  Bill"  and  introduce  it  into 
the  Legislature,  which  was  that  of  1864,  and 
thus  learn  the  obstacles  to  be  met;  for  efforts 
had  repeatedly  been  made  to  pass  health  bills 
without  success.  The  bill  was  drawn 
A  Health      ^^^^S  the  lines  of  previous  bills,  and 
Bill  ^^^    altogether    inadequate    in    its 

provisions  to  effect  the  required  re- 
forms.   The  effort,  however,  developed  the  fact 


42  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

that  the  real  opposition  to  health  legislation  was 
the  City  Inspector's  Department.  As  that  de- 
partment exercised  all  of  the  health  powers,  any 
proper  health  bill  would  abolish  it  altogether. 
The  City  Inspector,  at  that  time,  was  a  grossly 
ignorant  politician,  but  as  he  had  upwards  of 
one  million  of  dollars  at  his  disposal,  he  had  a 
prevailing  influence  in  the  Legislature  when 
any  bill  affected  his  interests.  At  the  hearing 
on  the  Association's  bill,  the  City  Inspector's 
agents  denied  every  allegation  as  to  the  unsani- 
tary condition  of  the  city,  and  as  the  Association 
had  no  definite  information  as  to  the  facts  as- 
serted, the  bill  failed,  as  had  all  the  bills  of  the 
Sanitary  Association  during  the  previous  ten 
years. 

IN  conference  it  was  now  decided  to  make  a 
thorough  sanitary  inspection  of  the  city  by 
a  corps  of  competent  physicians,  draft  a  new 
and  much  more  comprehensive  measure,  and 
thus  be  prepared  to  confront  the  City  Inspector 

with    reliable    facts    in 

Sanitary  Inspection  regard    to    the    actual 

of  New  York  condition    of    the    city. 

The  Citizens'  Associa- 
tion consented  to  bear  the  expense  of  the  un- 
dertaking. 

Under  the  auspices  of  the  Association,  and  in 
the  absence  of  the  secretary  of  the  Committee 
on  Health,  Dr.  Elisha  Harris,  who  was  at  that 


THE  AWAKENING  IN  AMERICA  ^3 

time  in  the  service  of  the  United  States  Sanitary 
Association,  I  organized  and  supervised  the  in- 
spection. The  corps  of  inspectors  consisted  of 
young  physicians,  each  assigned  to  one  of  the 
districts  into  which  the  city  M^as  divided.  The 
v»  ork  was  completed  during  the  summer  months 
of  1864,  and  the  original  reports  of  the  inspect- 
ors were  bound  in  seventeen  large  folio  vol- 
umes. These  reports  M^ere  afterwards  edited 
by  the  secretary.  Dr.  Elisha  Harris,  and  pub- 
lished by  the  Association  in  a  volume  of  over 
500  pages.  The  total  cost  to  the  Association  of 
this  inspection  and  publication  was  $22,000;  but 
it  richly  repaid  the  Association,  for  it  accom- 
plished the  object  for  which  it  was  undertaken. 

This  volunteer  sanitar}^  inspection  of  a  great 
city  was  regarded  by  European  health  authori- 
ties as  the  most  remarkable  and  creditable  in 
the  histor}^  of  municipal  reform.  Too  much 
credit  can  not  be  given  to  the  President  of  the 
Association,  Peter  Cooper,  and  to  the  Secretary, 
Nathaniel  Sands,  for  the  constant  support  which 
they  gave  the  Committee  on  Health  in  the  prose- 
cution of  this  great  undertaking. 

Meantime  the  Committee  on  Law  perfected  ap 
bill  to  be  introduced  at  the  coming  session  of 
the  Legislature,  1865.  It  was  the  joint  product 
of  the  Medical  and  Law  Committees,  and  was 
made  the  subject  of  extensive  study  and  re- 
search, in  order  to  embody  in  it  every  provision 
essential  to  its  practical  operations. 


44  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

At  the  request  of  the  Committees  I  made  the 
first  draft  for  the  purpose  of  embodying  the 
sanitary  features  as  the  basis  of  the  bill.  Former 
health  bills  were  restricted  in  their  operations 
to  the  city  of  New  York,  and  the  officers  were 
appointed  by  the  Mayor.  As  the  government 
of  the  city  was  dominated  in  all  of  its  depart- 
ments by  Tweed,  it  was  decided  to  place  the 
proposed  new  health  organization  under  the 
control  of  the  State,  by  making  a  Metropolitan 
Health  District,  the  area  of  which  should  be 
co-extensive  with  that  of  the  Metropolitan  Po- 
lice District.  This  feature  of  the  bill  was  also 
important  because  the  protection  of  the  city 
from  contagious  diseases  in  outljdng  districts 
required  that  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Board 
should  extend  to  contiguous  populations. 

The  original  draft  having  been  approved  by 
the  Committee  on  Health,  Mr.  Eaton  was  re- 
quested to  perfect  the  bill  by  adding  the  legal 
provisions.  As  he  had  recently  made  a  study  of 
the  English  health  laws,  he  incorporated  many 
items  especially  relating  to  the  powers  of  the 
Board  which  were  quite  novel  in  this  country. 

ONE  feature  of  the  bill  deserves  mention;  for 
it  is  an  anomaly  in  legislation  and  appar- 
ently violates  the  most  sacred  principle  of 
justice;  viz.,  the  power  of  the  courts  to  review 
the  proceedings  of  a  health  board.    The  Com- 
mittees concluded  that  a  board  which  was  au- 


THE  AWAKENING  IN  AMERICA  45 

thorized  to  abate  nuisances  "dangerous  to  life 
and  detrimental  to  health"  should 
An  Anomaly  not  be  subjected  to  the  possible 
in  Law  liability  of  being  interrupted  in 
its  efforts  to  abate  them  by 
an  injunction  that  would  delay  its  action.  Ac- 
cordingly the  law  as  so  drawn  that  the  Metro- 
politan Board  was  empowered  to  create  ordi- 
nances, to  execute  them  in  its  own  time  and 
manner,  and  to  sit  in  judgment  on  its  own  acts, 
without  the  possibility  of  being  interrupted  by 
review  proceedings  or  injunctions  by  any  court. 
Its  power  was  made  autocratic.  The  language 
of  that  portion  of  the  bill  conveying  these  pow- 
ers was  purposely/  made  very  technical,  in  order 
that  only  a  legal  mind  could  interpret  its  full 
meaning,  it  being  believed  that  the  ordinary 
legislator  would  not  favor  the  measure  if  he 
understood  its  entire  import.  It  is  an  interest- 
ing fact  that  the  first  case  brought  into  court 
under  the  law  was  an  effort  to  prove  the  uncon- 
stitutionality of  this  feature;  but  it  was  carried 
to  the  Court  of  Appeals,  and  its  constitutional- 
ity was  sustained  by  a  majority  of  one. 

/^VN  the  assembling  of  the  Legislature  of  1865 
^^  the  Metropolitan  Health  Bill  was  formally 
introduced  into  both  houses,  and  prepara- 
tions made  to  secure  its  passage.  Mr.  Eaton  was 
selected  by  the  Citizens'  Association  to  advocate 
the  legal  provisions  of  the  bill  at  the  hearings 


40  THE  CITY   THAT  WAS 


before  the  committees  of  the  Legislature,  and  I 

was  delegated  to  explain 
Introduction  of  an  the  sanitary  requirements 
Epoch-Making  Bill    of  the  measure.   The  first 

hearing  occurred  on  the 
thirteenth  of  February,  before  a  joint  com- 
mittee of  both  houses,  Hon.  Andrew  D.  White, 
senator,  presiding.  A  large  audience  was  pres- 
ent, including  the  City  Inspector  and  the  usual 
retinue  of  office  holders  in  his  department.  The 
Citizens  Association  was  represented  by  Rev. 
Henry  W.  Bellows,  Dr.  James  R.  Wood,  Dr. 
Wiliard  Parker,  Prof.  John  W.  Draper,  and  sev- 
eral other  prominent  citizens,  in  addition  to  Mr. 
Eaton  and  myself. 

Mr.  Eaton  first  addressed  the  committee,  and 
made  an  admirable  presentation  of  the  legal 
features  of  the  bill.  He  eloquently  appealed 
for  its  enactment  into  law,  in  order  to  create 
in  New  York  a  competent  health  authority,  with 
power  to  relieve  the  city  of  its  gross  sanitary 
evils  and  adopt  and  enforce  measures  for  the 
promotion  of  the  public  health. 

I  followed  him,  my  task  being  to  show,  from 
the  existing  condition  of  the  city,  the  imperative 
need  of  such  legislation.  My  remarks  on  the 
occasion  were  published  in  The  New  York 
Times  of  March  16,  1865. 


IV 

New  York,  the  Unclean 


The  illustrations  in  this  chapter,  with  the  front- 
ispiece of  the  book,  have  all  been  reproduced 
from  the  elaborate  report  published  by  the  Coun- 
cil of  Hygiene  of  the  Citizens'  Association.  My 
address  before  the  Legislative  Committee  is  here 
given  as  it  then  appeared  in  The  New  York 
Times  of  March  13,  1865,  with  the  correction  of 
some  typographical  errors.  It  consisted  of  a 
detailed  presentation  of  the  facts  recorded  and 
sworn  to  by  the  medical  inspectors  employed  by 
the  Citizens'  Association,  together  v/ith  photo- 
graphic illustrations  which  were  made  by  them. 


R.  CHAIRMAN:  I  have  been  re- 
quested to  lay  before  you  some 
of  the  results  of  a  sanitary  in- 
spection of  New  York  City,  un- 
dertaken and  prosecuted  to  a 
successful  completion  by  a  vol- 
untary organization  of  citizens. 
There  has  long  been  a  settled  conviction  in  the 
minds  of  the  medical  men  of  New  York,  that 

that  city  is  laboring  under 
Alarm  of  Medical    sanitary   evils   of  which   it 
Men  might    be    relieved.     This 

opinion  is  not  mere  conjec- 
ture, but  it  is  based  upon  the  daily  observations 
which  they  are  accustomed  to  make  in  the  pur- 
suit of  professional  duties. 

Familiar,  by  daily  study,  with  the  causes  of 
diseases,  and  the  laws  which  govern  their 
spread,  they  have  seen  yearly  accumulating 
about  and  within  the  homes  of  the  laboring 
classes  all  the  recognized  causes  of  the  most 
preventible  diseases,  without  a  solitary  measure 
being  taken  by  those  in  authority  to  apply  an 
effectual   remedy.     They   have   seen    the   poor 

(49) 


50  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

crowded  into  closer  and  closer  quarters,  until 
the  system  has  actually  become  one  of  tenant- 
house  packing.  They  have  witnessed  the  prev- 
alence of  terrible  and  fatal  epidemics,  having 
their  origin  in  or  intensified  by  these  conditions, 
and  many  of  their  professional  brethren  have 
perished  in  the  courageous  performance  of 
their  duties  to  the  poor  and  suffering. 

Cognizant  of  these  growing  evils,  and  believ- 
ing that  they  are  susceptible  of  removal,  they 
have  repeatedly  and  publicly  protested  against 
the  longer  tolerance  of  such  manifest  causes  of 
disease  and  death  in  our  city.  Large  bodies  of 
influential  citizens  have  been  equally  impressed 
with  the  importance  of  radical  reform  in  the 
health  organizations  of  New  York,  and  have 
strenuously  labored,  but  in  vain,  to  obtain 
proper  legislative  enactments. 

HTO  give  practical  effect  to  their  efforts,  it  was 
*  determined  in  May  last  to  undertake  a  sys- 
tematic investigation  of  the  sanitary  condi- 
tion of  the  city.  For  this  purpose  a  central  or- 
ganization was  formed,  and  when  I  mention  the 

names  of  its  leading  members,  I 
A  Systematic  give  you  the  best  assurance  that 
Investigation    the  work  was  undertaken  in  the 

interests  of  science  and  human- 
ity. The  president  was  Dr.  Joseph  M.  Smith, 
one  of  the  ablest  writers  on  sanitary  science  in 
this    country,    and    among    its    members    were 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  51 

Drs.  Valentine  Mott,  James  Anderson,  Willard 
Parker,  Alonzo  Clark,  Gurdon  Buck,  James  R. 
Wood,  Charles  Henschel,  Alfred  C.  Post,  Isaac 
E.  Taylor,  John  W.  Draper,  R.  Ogden  Doremus, 
Henry  Goulden,  Henry  D.  Bulkley,  and  Elisha 
Harris. 

In  prosecuting  this  inquiry  the  Association 
was  guided  by  the  experience  of  similar  organi- 
zations in  Great  Britain,  where  sanitary  science 
is  now  cultivated  with  the  greatest  zeal,  and  is 
yielding  the  richest  fruits.  As  a  preliminary 
step  to  the  introduction  of  sanitary  reforms, 
many  of  the  populous  towns  of  England  made 
a  more  or  less  complete  inspection  of  the  homes 
of  the  people  to  determine  their  condition,  and 
to  enable  them  to  arrive  at  correct  conclusions 
as  to  the  required  remedial  measures.  The 
English  Government  undertook  a  similar  in- 
vestigation through  its  "Commissioners  for  In- 
quiring into  the  State  of  Large  Towns  and 
Populous  Districts,"  and  the  voluminous  and 
exhaustive  reports  of  that  Commission  laid  the 
foundation  of  the  admirable  sanitary  system  of 
that  country. 

The  first  object  of  sanitary  organization  was 
apparently,  therefore,  to  obtain  detailed  in- 
formation as  to  the  existing  causes  of  disease 
and  the  mortality  of  the  population,  and  as  to 
the  special  incidence  of  that  mortality  up- 
on each  sex,  and  each  age,  on  separate  places, 
on    various    occupations;    in    fact,    to    present 


/ 

52  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

a  detailed  account  of  what  may  be  called,  in 
commercial  phrase,  our  transactions  in  human 
life. 

EVIDENTLY  the  best  method  of  arriving  at 
such  knowledge  was  by  a   systematic  in- 
spection.     And  that  inspection  must  be  a 
house-to-house  visitation,  in  which  the  course 
of  inquiry  not  only  developed  all  the  facts  re- 
lating to  the  sanitary,  but 
A   House-to-House     equally  to  the  social  con- 
Inspection  ^ition  of  the  people.      It 

must  necessarily  be  re- 
quired of  the  inspector  that  he  visit  every  house, 
and  every  family  in  the  house,  and  learn  by 
personal  examination,  inquiry,  and  observation, 
every  circumstance,  external  and  internal  to  the 
domicile,  bearing  upon  the  health  of  the  indi- 
vidual. 

To  perform  such  service  satisfactorily,  skilled 
labor  must  be  employed.  No  student  of  general 
science,  much  less  a  common  artisan,  was  qual- 
ified to  undertake  this  investigation  into  the 
causes  of  disease;  however  patent  these  causes 
might  be,  he  had  no  power  to  appreciate  their 
real  significance.  Minds  trained  by  education, 
and  long  experience  in  observing  and  treating 
the  diseases  of  the  laboring  classes,  could  alone 
thoroughly  and  properly  accomplish  the  work 
proposed. 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  53 

HAPPILY,  experts  were  at  hand  and  prepared 
to  enter  upon  the  task,  viz.:  the  dispensary 
physicians.     The  daily  duties  of  these  prac- 
titioners have  been  for  years  to  practice  among 
the  poor,   and  study   minutely   their   diseases; 
and   thus   they   have   gained   an 
The  Medical     extensive    and    accurate    knowl- 
Experts        edge  of  the  sanitary  and  social 
condition  of  the  mass  of  the  peo- 
ple.    Many  of  these  practitioners  have  been  en- 
gaged in  dispensary  service,  and  in  a  single  dis- 
trict, for  ten  to  twenty  years.     They  have  thus 
become  so  familiar  with  the  poor  of  their  dis- 
trict, though  often  numbering  40,000  to  50,000, 
that  they  know  the  peculiarities  of  each  house, 
the  class  of  disease  prevalent  each  month  of  the 
year,  and  to  a  large  extent  the  habits,  character, 
etc.,  of  the  families  which  occupy  them. 

From  this  class  of  medical  men  the  Council 
selected,  as  far  as  possible,  its  corps  of  Inspect- 
ors. As  a  body,  they  represent  the  best  med- 
ical talent  of  the  junior  portion  of  the  profes- 
sion of  New  York.  Many  occupy  high  social 
positions,  and  all  were  men  of  refinement,  edu- 
cation, and  devotion  to  duty.  They  entered 
upon  the  work  with  the  utmost  enthusiasm; 
engaging  in  it  as  a  purely  scientific  study. 

Everywhere  the  people  welcomed  the  Inspect- 
ors, invited  them  to  examine  their  homes,  and 
gave  them  the  most  ample  details. 


54  THE  CITY  THAT   WAS 


THE  plan  of  inspection  adopted  by  the  Coun- 
cil was  as  follows :  The  city  was  divided  into 
thirty-one  districts  and  an  Inspector  selected 
for  each,  care  being  taken  to  assign  to  each  in- 
spector a  district  with  which  he  was  most  fa- 
miliar. The  Inspector  was  directed 
Plan  of        ^^  commence  his  inspection  by  first 
Inspection      ti"aversing    the    whole    district,    to 
learn  its  general  and  topographical 
peculiarities.      He    was    then    to    take    up    the 
squares  in  detail,  examining  them  consecutively 
as  they  lie  in  belts. 

Commencing  at  a  given  corner  of  his  district, 
he  was  first  to  go  around  the  square  and  note: 
1.  Nature  of  the  ground,  2.  Drainage  and 
sewerage.  3.  Number  of  houses  in  the  square. 
4.  Vacant  lots  and  their  sanitary  condition.  5. 
Courts  and  alleys.  6.  Rear  buildings.  7.  Num- 
ber of  tenement  houses.  11.  Drinking  shops, 
brothels,  gambling  saloons,  etc.  12.  Stores  and 
markets.  13.  Factories,  schools,  crowded  build- 
ings. 14.  Slaughter-houses  (describe  par- 
ticularly). 15.  Bone  and  offal  nuisances.  16. 
Stables,  etc.     17.   Churches  and  school  edifices. 

Returning  to  the  point  of  starting,  he  was  to 
commence  a  detailed  inspection  of  each  build- 
ing, noting :  a.  Condition  and  material  of  build- 
ings, h.  Number  of  stories  and  their  height, 
c.  Number  of  families  intended  to  be  accom- 
modated, and  space  allotted  to  each.  d.  Water 
supply  and  house  drainage.      e.  Location  and 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  ^^ 

character  of  water-closets.  /.  Disposal  of  garb- 
age and  house  slops,  g.  Ventilation,  external 
and  internal,  h.  Cellars  and  basements,  and 
their  population,  i.  Conditions  of  halls  and 
passages,  j.  Frontage  on  street,  court,  alley  — 
N.,  E.,  S.  or  W.  18.  Prevailing  character  of  the 
population.  19.  Prevailing  sickness  and  mor- 
tality. 20.  Sources  of  preventible  disease  and 
mortality.  21.  Condition  of  streets  and  pave- 
ments.    22.   Miscellaneous  information. 

HE  entered  each  room,  examined  its  means  of 
ventilation  and  its  contents,  noted  the  num- 
ber of  occupants  by  day  and  by  night,  and 
carefully   estimated   the    cubical   area   to   each 
person.      Whenever   any   contagious   or   infec- 
tious  disease   was   discovered,   as 
Each  Room     f^ver,    smallpox,    measles,    scar- 
Examined      latina,  the  Inspector  made  a  spe- 
cial   report    upon    the    dwelling. 
This    report    embodied    specific    answers    to    a 
series  of  questions,  furnished  in  a  blank  form, 
requiring  him  1.  To  trace  and  record  the  med- 
ical history  of  the  sick  person.     2.  To  ascertain 
and  record  facts  relating  to  the  family  and  other 
persons    exposed    to    the    patients    and    to    the 
causes  of  the  malady .     3.  To  report  the  sanitary 
condition  of  the  domicil.     4.  To  report  the  sta- 
tistics and  sanitary  condition  of  the  population 
of  that  domicil.     5.  To  report  upon  the  sanitary 
condition  of  the  locality  or  neighborhood  and 


56  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

its  population.  6.  To  preserve  and  make  re- 
turns of  these  records.  7.  To  prepare  on  the 
spot  the  necessary  outlines  or  data  for  the 
sketching  of  a  map  or  descriptive  chart  of  the 
domicil,  block,  or  locality. 

Each  Inspector  was  supplied  with  a  note- 
book and  a  permanent  record-book;  in  the  first 
lie  constantly  made  notes  as  his  examination 
proceeded,  and  in  the  latter  these  notes  were 
expanded  and  put  on  permanent  record.  These 
permanent  record-books  are  the  property  of 
the  Association  and  embrace  for  the  most  part 
minute  details  concerning  every  building  and 
tenement  occupied  by  the  laboring  classes,  as 
also,  grog-shops,  stables,  vacant  lots,  slaughter- 
houses, etc. 

Each  Inspector  was  furnished  with  materials 
for  drawing,  and  was  directed  to  make  accurate 
drawings  of  the  squares  in  his  district,  locating 
each  building,  vacant  lot,  etc.,  and  distinguish- 
ing the  character  and  condition  of  each  by  an 
appropriate  color.  Many  of  these  drafts  of 
districts  are  beautiful  specimens  of  art,  and  as 
sanitary  charts  enable  the  observer  to  locate  in- 
fectious and  contagious  diseases,  and  with  the 
aid  of  the  permanent  records,  to  determine  the 
internal  and  external  domiciliary  conditions 
under  which  they  occur. 

I  have  been  thus  minute  in  specifying  the  de- 
tails of  the  plan  of  inspection,  the  qualifications 
of  the  Inspectors,  and  the  means  employed,  in 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  57 


order  that  the  character  of  the  work  and  the 
value  of  the  results  obtained  may  be  properly 
appreciated. 

«  ARLY  in  the  month  of  May  the  work  of  thor- 
I  ^  ougliiy  inspecting  the  insalubrious  quarters, 
where  fever  and  other  pestilential  diseases 
prevail,  had  been  commenced,  and  the  fact  was 
soon  ascertained  that  smallpox  and  typhus  fe- 
ver were  existing  and  spreading 

r>  •  ^  f  i^u^  in  almost  every  crowded  lo- 
Period  of  the        ,  ,        .  .,        ./        y.  . 

Inspection        ^^^^^^  ^^  ^^^^  ^^^'^'      ^*  ^^^  ^^* 
until  about  the  middle  of  July 

that  the  entire  corps  of  Inspectors  v/as  engaged. 
The  work  was  then  prosecuted  with  vigor  and 
without  interruption  to  the  middle  of  Novem- 
ber, when  it  was  completed.  The  Inspectors 
met  regularly  every  Saturday  evening  to  report 
to  a  committee  on  the  part  of  the  Council  the 
progress  of  their  work,  and  to  receive  advice 
and  instruction  in  regard  to  all  questions  of  a 
doubtful  character. 

On  the  completion  of  the  inspection  each  In- 
spector was  required  to  prepare  a  final  report 
embodying  the  general  results  of  his  labors. 
These  reports  have  all  been  properly  collated, 
under  the  direction  of  the  Association,  and  are 
now  passing  through  the  press.  They  will  soon 
appear  in  an  octavo  volume  of  about  400  pages, 
largely  illustrated,  with  maps  and  diagrams.  It 
will  be  the  first  interior  view  of  the  sanitary  and 


58  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

social  condition  of  the  population  of  New  York, 
and  will  abundantlj^  demonstrate  the  fact  that, 
though  a  great  and  prosperous  commercial 
centre,  she  does  not  afford  happy  homes  to  hun- 
dreds of  thousands. 

BEFORE   proceeding  to   an   analysis   of  this 
work,  it  will  be  necessary  to  notice  the  topo- 
graphical peculiarities  of  our  city,  and  the 
distribution  of  its  population.     New  York  is  an 
island    having    an    area    of    about    thirty-four 
square  miles,  inclusive   of  its 
Distribution  of      parks.       Unlike    Philadelphia, 
Population         London,  and  most  other  large 
cities,     which    have    a    back- 
ground of  hundreds  of  square  miles  upon  which 
to   extend   according   to   the   exigencies   of  the 
population  or  of  business.  New  York  is  limited 
in  its  power  of  expansion,  and  must  accomodate 
itself  to  its  given  area.     While  it  is  true  that  a 
large  business  population  will  gather  upon  the 
adjacent  shores,  it  is   equally  true   that  these 
non-residents  will  be  of  the  better  class.      The 
laboring  population  will,  for  the  most  part,  re- 
main  upon    the   island,   and   must   be   accom- 
modated in  the  city  proper,  as  they  are  com- 
pelled to  live  near  their  work. 

New  York  has,  thus  far,  grown  without  any 
control  or  supervision,  until  its  population  is 
estimated  at  1,000,000  of  persons.  Of  this  num- 
ber, at  least  one-half  are  of  the  laboring  apd  de- 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  59 


pendant  classes,  compelled  to  live  under  such 
conditions  as  they  find  in  their  homes,  without 
any  power,  either  to  change  or  improve  them. 
Following  the  natural  law  which  governs  the 
movements  of  such  a  population,  the  wealthier 
or  independent  class  spreads  itself  with  its  busi- 
ness arrangements  over  the  larger  proportion 
of  the  area,  and  the  poorer  or  dependent  class 
is  crowded  into  the  smallest  possible  space. 

ALREADY  New  York  has  covered  about  8  of 
its  34  square  miles  with  the  dwellings  of  a 
population  not  far  from  1,000,000,  and  all 
its    commercial    and   manufacturing    establish- 
ments.    And  the  result  is,  as  might  have  been 
anticipated,       the       dependent 

™,  ,  y,  class,     numbering     fully     one- 

1  enant-House     i    ,  n     i-  .i  ?     •  j   j 

p     ,  .  hall  ot  the  people,  is  crowded 

^  into    tenant-houses    which    oc- 

cupy an  area  of  not  more  than  two  square 
miles.  Such  crowding  amounts  literally  to 
packing. 

For  example,  it  is  estimated  that  there  are 
three  contiguous  blocks  of  tenant-houses  which 
contain  a  larger  population  than  Fifth  Avenue; 
or,  again,  if  Fifth  Avenue  had  front  and  rear 
tenant-houses  as  densely  packed  as  tenant- 
houses  generally  are,  there  would  be  a  popula- 
tion of  100,000  on  that  single  avenue.  A  single 
tenant-court  in  the  Fourth  Ward  is  arranged 
for  the  packing  of  1,000  persons. 


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SECTION    OF    CITY    240    BY    150    FEET,    OCCUPIED 

BY  111  FAMILIES,  AND  BY  STABLES,  SOAP 

FACTORY,   AND   TAN YARD 


62  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

A  resident  of  the  same  Ward  reports  that: 
"On  a  piece  of  ground  240  feet  by  150,  there  are 
20  tenant-houses,  occupied  by  111  families,  5 
stables,  a  large  soap  and  candle  factory,  and  a 
tan-yard,  the  receptacle  of  green  hides.  The 
filth  and  stench  of  this  locality  are  beyond  any 
power  of  description."  In  general,  it  may  be 
stated  that  the  average  number  of  families  to 
a  house  among  the  poor  is  7,  or  about  35  per- 
sons. 

IT  is  necessary  also  to  make  a  single  explana- 
tion, to  render  more  apparent  the  bearing  of 
the   facts   developed.      For   the   purposes   of 
sanitary  inquiry,  the  causes  of  disease  are  di- 
vided into  those  which  are  inevitable,  and  those 

which  are  avoidable  or  re- 

Avoidahle  and        movable,  and  hence  it  fol- 

Inevitable  Disease     lows     that     diseases     and 

deaths  are  divided  into 
those  which  are  inevitable  and  those  which  are 
preventable.  For  example:  Of  unavoidable 
causes  of  disease,  we  have  vicissitudes  of 
weather,  accidents,  old  age,  physical  degenera- 
tions, etc. 

Of  avoidable  or  removable  causes  of  disease 
we  have  those  conditions  around  or  within  our 
dwellings  or  places  of  business  or  resort,  errors 
in  our  mode  of  living,  etc.,  which  vitiate  health, 
or  rather  tend  to  diseases,  and  yet  which  can 
be  removed  or  changed  by  human  agency.   For 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  68 


example,  a  country  residence  may  be  most 
favorably  located  for  health,  and  yet  deca^dng 
vegetable  matter  in  the  cellar,  or  a  cesspool  so 
situated  as  to  allow  the  gaseous  emanations  to 
be  diffused  through  the  house,  will  expose  all 
the  inmates  to  fevers,  diarrhoea  and  dysentery. 

These  would  be  preventable  diseases,  and  all 
the  deaths  therefrom  would  be  preventable,  and 
hence  unnecessary  deaths.  In  like  manner  in 
cities,  all  diseases  and  deaths  due  to  causes 
which  human  agencies  can  remove  are  prevent- 
able. And  it  is  a  melancholy  fact  that  fifty  per 
cent  of  the  mortality  of  cities  is  estimated  to  be 
due  to  such  causes,  and  is  hence  unnecessary. 

In  reviewing  the  result  of  this  inspection,  I 
shall  call  your  attention  only  to  the  more  patent 
causes  of  disease  found  existing,  and  to  the 
preventable  diseases  discovered,  and  their  re- 
lation to  these  causes.  In  this  evidence  you  will 
find  ample  proof  that  radical  reforms  are  re- 
quired in  the  health  organizations  of  New  York. 

I  WILL  first  notice  the  causes  of  disease  which 
exist  external  to  our  dwellings,  and  which 
are  the  most  readily  susceptible  of  remedy. 
The  first  that  attracts  attention  in  New  York  is 
the  condition  of  the  streets.  No  one  can 
Filthy    doubt  that  if  the  streets  in  a  thickly 
Streets  populated  part  of  a  town  are  made  the 
common   receptacle    of   the    refuse   of 
families,  that  in  its  rapid  decomposition  a  vast 


64  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

amount  of  poisonous  gases  must  escape,  which 
will  impregnate  the  entire  district,  penetrate 
the  dwellings,  and  render  the  atmosphere  in 
the  neighborhood  in  a  high  degree  injurious  to 
the  public  health.  In  confirmation  of  this  state- 
ment, I  will  quote  the  City  Inspector,  who,  in  a 
former  communication  to  the  Common  Council, 
says: 

"As  an  evidence  of  the  effect  of  this  state  of 
things  upon  the  health  of  the  community,  I 
would  state  that  the  mortality  of  the  city,  from 
the  first  of  March,  has  been  largely  on  the  in- 
crease, until  it  has  now  reached  a  point  of  fear- 
ful magnitude.  For  the  week  ending  April  27th, 
there  were  reported  to  this  department  one 
hundred  and  forty  more  deaths  than  occurred 
during  the  same  week  of  the  previous  year. 
Were  this  increase  of  mortality  the  result  of  an 
existing  pestilence  or  epidemic  among  us,  the 
public  would  become  justly  alarmed  as  to  the 
future;  but  although  no  actual  pestilence,  as 
such,  exists,  it  is  by  no  means  certain  that  we 
are  not  preparing  the  way  for  some  fatal 
scourge  by  the  no  longer  to  be  endured  lililiy 
condition  of  our  city," 

The  universal  testimony  of  the  sanitary  in- 
spectors is  that  in  all  portions  of  the  city  occu- 
pied by  the  poorer  classes,  the  streets  are  in  the 
same  filthy  condition  as  that  described  by  the 
City  Inspector,  and,  that  street  filth  is  one  of  the 
most  fruitful  causes  of  disease. 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  65 


5  AYS  the  Inspector  of  the  Eighth  Ward: 
"Laurens,  Wooster,  Clark,  and  Sullivan  are 
in  a  most  filthy  condition,  giving  off  insa- 
lubrious emanations  on  which  depend  the  many 
cases  of  fever,  cholera  infantum,  dysentery, 
and  pulmonary  diseases.  I  have 
Street  Filth  observed  that  near  where  other 
and  Disease  streets  cross  the  above-named 
streets  there  is  a  greater  propor- 
tionate amount  of  sickness;  and  this  fact  I  have 
shown  by  special  reports  of  typhus  and  typhoid 
fever  in  Grand  and  Broome,  and  dysentery  in 
Spring." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Sixth  Ward  says:  "Do- 
mestic garbage  and  filth  of  every  kind  is  thrown 
into  the  streets,  covering  their  surface,  filling  the 
gutters,  obstructing  the  sewer  culverts,  and 
sending  forth  perennial  emanations  which  must 
generate  pestiferous  disease.  In  winter  the  filth 
and  garbage,  etc.,  accumulate  in  the  streets,  to 
the  depth  sometimes  of  two  or  three  feet.  The 
garbage  boxes  are  a  perpetual  source  of  nui- 
sance in  the  streets,  filth  and  offal  being  thrown 
all  around  them,  pools  of  filthy  water  in  many 
instances  remaining  in  the  gutters,  and  having 
their  source  in  the  garbage  boxes." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Seventh  Ward  says: 
"The  whole  most  easterly  portion  of  the  district, 
the  streets  and  gutters  are  very  filthy  with  mud, 
ashes,  garbage,  etc." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Thirteenth  Ward  says: 


66  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


"The  streets  are  generally  in  a  filthy  and  un- 
wholesome condition;  especially  in  front  of  the 
tenant-houses,  from  which  the  garbage  and 
slops  are,  to  a  great  extent,  thrown  into  the 
streets,  where  they  putrefy,  rendering  the  air 
offensive  to  the  smell  and  deleterious  to  health. 
The  refuse  of  the  bedrooms  of  those  sick  with 
typhoid  and  scarlet  fevers  and  smallpox  is  fre- 
quently thrown  into  the  streets,  there  to  con- 
taminate the  air,  and,  no  doubt,  aid  in  the 
spread  of  those  pestilential  diseases." 

Says  the  Inspector  of  the  Ninth  Ward:  "The 
effect  of  dirty  streets  upon  the  public  health  is 
too  well  known,  and  too  often  insisted  upon,  to 
need  any  exposition  in  this  report.  The  largest 
number  of  cases  of  cholera  infantum,  cholera 
morbus,  and  kindred  disease,  is  always  found 
in  localities  where  the  streets  are  dirtiest." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Seventeenth  Ward 
writes:  "The  two  following  localities  present 
the  appearance  of  dung-nills  rather  than  the 
thoroughfares  in  a  civilized  city,  viz.:  Sixth 
Street,  between  Bowery  and  Second  Avenue, 
and  Eleventh  Street,  between  First  and  Second 
Avenues." 

THE  Inspector  of  the  Eleventh  Ward  says :  "As 
a  rule,  the  streets  are  extremely  dirty  and 
offensive,  and  the  gutters  obstructed  with 
filth.      The  filth  of  the  streets  is  composed  of 
house-slops,    refuse   vegetables,    decayed   fruit, 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  67 

store  and  shop  sweepings,  ashes,  dead  animals, 
and  even  human  excrements.    These 
Animals      putrifying    organic    substances    are 
Dead        ground    together    by    the    constantly 
passing      vehicles.         When      dried 
by  the  summer's  heat,  they  are  driven  by  the 
wind  in  every  direction  in  the  form  of  dust. 
When  remaining  moist  or  liquid  in  the  form  of 
"slush,"  they  emit  deleterious  and  very  offen- 
sive exhalations..      The  reeking  stench  of  the 
gutters,  the  street  filth,  and  domestic  garbage  of 
this  quarter  of  the  city,  constantly  imperil  the 
health  of  its  inhabitants.    It  is  a  well-recognized 
cause  of  diarrhoeal  diseases  and  fevers." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Eighteenth  Ward  re- 
ports: "The  streets  in  the  eastern  part  of  the 
district,  east  of  First  Avenue  especially,  have, 
for  the  past  six  months,  been  in  a  most  inexcus- 
ably filthy  condition.  The  pavement  here  is  un- 
even, there  are  deep  gutters  at  either  side  of 
the  streets,  filled  with  foul  slops,  in  which  float 
or  are  sunk  every  form  of  decaying  animal  and 
vegetable  matter.  Occasionall}^  at  remote  and 
irregular  intervals,  carts  come  round,  these 
stagnant  pools  are  dredged,  so  to  speak,  and 
their  black  and  decayed  solid  contents  raked 
out.  If  there  be  anything  on  earth  that  is  'rank 
and  smells  to  heaven,'  these  gutters  do  on  such 
occasions,  especially  in  the  summer  months. 
The  streets  in  this  part  of  the  city  are  the  prin- 
cipal depositories  of  garbage.  In  some  instances 


68  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

heaped  up  at  the  sides  of  the  streets,  in  others 
thrown  about  promiscuously,  the  event  in  either 
case  is  the  same,  if  it  be  allowed  to  remain  day 
after  day,  as  it  usually  is.  After  having  passed 
through  every  stage  of  decay,  after  having  cor- 
rupted the  surrounding  air  with  its  pestilential 
smell,  it  gradually  becomes  dessicated  and  con- 
verted into  dust  by  the  summer  sun  and  the 
constantly  passing  vehicles.  And  now  every 
horse  that  passes  stirs  it  up,  every  vehicle  leaves 
a  cloud  of  it  behind;  it  is  lifted  into  the  air  with 
every  wind  and  carried  in  every  direction. 

"Those  who  are  directly  responsible  for  this 
state  of  things  suffer  no  more  than  the  cleanly 
and  thrifty  who  are  so  unfortunate  as  to  live 
anywhere  the  wind,  blowing  from  this  quarter, 
reaches  them.  And  what  a  pulvis  compositum 
is  it  to  breathe  into  the  lungs!  As  we  pass  by, 
our  mouths  become  full  of  it,  we  draw  it  in  with 
our  breath.  It  is  swallowed  into  the  stomach, 
it  penetrates  our  dress  and  clings  until  it 
has  covered  our  perspiring  skin.  Surely  no 
dumping-ground,  no  sewer,  no  vault,  contains 
more  filth  or  in  greater  variety  than  did  the  air 
in  certain  parts  of  our  city  during  the  long  sea- 
son of  drought  the  past  summer.  And  wherever 
the  wind  blows,  the  foul  corruption  is  carried; 
by  a  process  as  sure  and  universal  as  the  diffu- 
sion of  gases,  is  it  conveyed  throughout  the  city. 
Such,  often,  is  the  air  drawn  into  the  lungs  with 
every  respiration,,  of  the  poor  sufferer  stifled 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  69 


with  consumption  or  burning  with  fever.  No 
barrier  can  shut  it  out,  no  social  distinction  can 
save  us  from  it;  no  domestic  cleanliness,  no 
private  sanitary  measures  can  substitute  a  pure 
atmosphere  for  a  foul  one." 

But  I  need  not  multiply  these  quotations.  It 
will  suffice  to  state  that  during  the  week  ending 
August  5th,  a  special  inspection  of  all  the 
streets  was  made  and  they  were  found  to  be 
reeking,  and,  indeed,  almost  impassable,  with 
filth.  And  to-day  they  are  in,  if  possible,  a  still 
worse  condition  than  ever  before. 

CLOSELY  allied  to  the  streets  are  courts  and 
.  allej^s.     These  cul-de-sacs  leading  to,  and 
adjoining  the  close  and  unventilated  homes 
of  the  poor,  are  almost  universally  in  a  more 
filthy  condition  than  the  adjacent  street.     They 
are  the  receptacles  of  much  of 
Filthy  Courts     ^^^  waste  of  the  house,  and  are 
and  Alleys       rarely  cleaned.    The  air  of  these 
places    during    the    summer    is 
often  the  most  stifling  and  irrespirable,  and  yet 
as  it  descends  it  enters  the  closely  packed  ten- 
ant-house   and    furnishes    to    the    inmates    the 
elements  of  disease  and  death.    Says  the  Inspec- 
tor of  the  Fourth  Ward: 

"Slops  from  rear  buildings  of  such  premises 
are  usually  emptied  into  a  shallow  gutter  cut  in 
the  flagging  and  extending  from  the  yard,  or 
space  between  front  and  rear  buildings,  to  the 


->-'  '"fertSS 


i  ' 


■'^>-'j 


c.-.^-,..';-  , 


A  TENANT-HOUSE  CUL-DE-SAC,  PARK  STREET,  NEAR 

CITY    HALL,    WITH    307    INMATES;      PHOTOGRAPHED 

FROM  A  HOUSE-TOP  IN   PEARL   STREET,   1865 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN 


71 


street.  This  is  often  clogged  up  by  semi-fluid 
filth,  so  that  the  alley  and  those  parts  of  the 
yard  through  which  it  runs  are  not  infrequently 
overflown  and  submerged  to  the  depth  of  sev- 
eral inches.  There  are  more  than  four  hundred 
families  in  this  district  whose  homes  can  only 
be  reached  by  wading  through  a  disgusting  de- 
posit of  filthy  refuse.    In  some  instances,  a  stag- 


ST  RE  ET 


—  STREET 


A    CUL-DE-SAC,    SHOWING    OVERCROWDING,    NEAR 
SLAUGHTER-HOUSE  AND  STABLES 

New  York,  1865 

ing  of  plank,  elevated  a  few  inches  above  the 
surface,  is  constructed  through  the  alleys." 


N    the    court   is    found    generally    that   most 

pestiferous  of  all  the  sources  of  civic  unclean- 

liness    and    unheal thiness  —  the    privy    and 

cesspool.     These  receptacles  are  rarely  drained 

into  the  sewers,  and  consequently  require  for 


72  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


their  cleanliness  the  frequent  and  faithful  atten- 
tion of  the  scavenger.  The  re- 
Cesspool  ports  of  the  sanitary  inspectors 

Abominations  prove  that  this  work  is  most 
irregularly  and  imperfectly 
done.  Hundreds  of  places  were  found  where 
these  nuisances  existed  within,  under  or  beside 
large  tenant-houses,  creating  a  vast  amount  of 
disease  and  death.  Numerous  instances  of  this 
kind  are  detailed  in  these  reports,  which  are  al- 
most too  revolting  to  be  believed.  I  will  quote 
but  one  or  two  illustrations : 

"The  privies  (two  in  one)  of  Nos.  —  and  — 
West  Twenty-fourth  Street  need  instant  clean- 
ing. They  are  overflowing  the  yard,  and  are 
very  offensive.  The  privy  No.  —  Seventh 
Avenue,  as  in  the  preceding  two  adjoining 
houses,  is  in  the  yard;  and  adjoins  the  house, 
and  is  on  a  line  with  the  southerly  wall  of  house 
No.  —  (the  adjacent  house),  which  has  a  back 
area;  the  wall  of  said  area  being  part  of  the 
foundation  of  the  privy.  At  times  the  fluid  por- 
tion of  the  privy  oozes  through  its  own  and  the 
area  wall. 

"The  privy  of  the  rear  tenant-house  No.  — 
West  Twenty-second  Street  is  used  by  42  per- 
sons; it  has  five  subdivisions,  one  for  every  two 
families.  The  compartments  are  so  small  that 
a  person  can  scarcely  turn  round  in  them,  and 
so  dark  that  they  have  to  be  entered  with  an 
artificial  light.      The  cellar  itself,  as  lias  been 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN 


73 


PLAN   OF   CELLAR 


stated,  is  damp, 
dark,  and  with- 
out ventilation. 
Under  such  cir- 
cumstances the 
emanations  o  f 
t  li  e  excremen- 
tious  matter  of 
42  persons  can 
find  no  escape; 
thus  this  privy- 
cellar  is  worse 
H    than    a    Stygian 

The  Inspector 
of  the  Fifth 
Ward  says:  "Very  few  tenements  have  water- 
closets  in  the  house;  they  have  privies  in  the 
yards,  which,  as  a  rule,  are  insufficient  for  the 
accommodation  of  the  numbers  crowded  into 
the  houses;  many  are  not  connected  with  the 
sewers;  are  seldom  cleaned,  being  allowed  to 
overflow  in  some  cases,  rendering  the  neighbor- 
hood offensive  with  insalubrious  emanations." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Fourteenth  Ward  states 
that:  "The  water-closets  are  nearly  all  in  the 
yards  —  but  fev/  being  in  the  houses  —  and 
connecting  with  the  sewers.  The  greater  num- 
ber of  these  sewers  are  in  a  filthy  condition, 
being  but  seldom  emptied.  Many  of  those 
which  communicate  with  the  privies  are  choked 


74  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


up  by  all  sorts  of  offal  being  thrown  into  them, 
thereby  producing  a  very  bad  condition." 

THE  Inspector  of  the  Seventeenth  Ward  re- 
ports: "The  privies  of  East  Eleventh  Street, 
rear,  are  beneath  the  floored  alley-way  lead- 
ing to  the  building.      Large  holes  in  this  floor 
allow  ocular  inspection  from  above,  and  admit 
rain  and  dirt.      These  nuisances 
Unbelievable    are   almost   always   overflowing, 
Vileness        and  the  passage  leading  to  them 
is  full  of  f^cal  matter.     It  would 
seem  impossible  for  human  beings  to  create  or 
endure  such  vileness.      The  cellar  is  used  by 
children  and  others  as  a  privy;  the  foul  air  there 
seems  never  to  change." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Sixteenth  Ward  says: 
"The  privies  form  one  end  of  the  chief  features 
of  insalubrity.  Nearly  all  of  them  are  too  small 
in  size  and  too  few  in  number,  and  without 
ventilation  or  seat-covers.  About  twelve  were 
found  locked  securely,  and  on  procuring  the  key 
and  inspecting  the  privy,  such  masses  of  human 
excrements  were  found  on  the  seats  and  floors 
as  would  Justify  the  locking  of  the  door  to  pro- 
tect unwary  persons  from  injury.  Occupants 
of  rear  buildings  are  the  principal  sufferers 
from  this  insalubrity.  The  proximity  of  privies 
is  in  some  cases  eight  feet  from  the  windows  of 
rear  houses;  the  odor  in  these  is,  especially  at 
night,  intolerable.     Instances  of  the  kind  are  to 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  75 

be  found  at  Nos.  — ,  —  and  —  West  Seventeenth 
Street,  and  others.  They  are  also  too  few  in 
number;  for  example.  No.  —  West  Nineteenth 
Street,  where  in  the  front  and  rear  buildings 
more  than  one  hundred  persons  live  who  have 
one  common  privy,  with  a  single  partition  divid- 
ing it,  and  but  four  seats  in  ail.  Twenty-five 
persons  are  expected  to  use  one  seat-opening." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Twentieth  Ward  says: 
"During  my  inspection  I  reported  a  number 
which  were  filled,  and  at  the  same  time  in  such 
need  of  repair  as  to  hazard  the  lives  of  those 
who  entered  them.  The  proximity  of  these 
places  to  the  houses  in  many  cases  is  a  fact  to 
which  I  would  call  your  attention.  One  instance 
of  this  kind  I  may  state :  At  a  house  in  Fortieth 
Street,  between  Broadway  and  Seventh  Avenue, 
the  privy  is  situated  about  10  feet  from  the  door, 
and  there  is  another  on  a  line  10  feet  from  the 
first,  and  still  another  within  10  feet  of  the  last 
mentioned,  making  three  privies  within  30  feet, 
and  two  of  these  belong  to  houses  fronting  on 
Broadway.  The  offensive  odor  arising  from 
these  places  contaminates  the  air  of  the  houses 
in  the  vicinity.  This  house,  in  Fortieth  Street, 
is  actually  unfit  to  live  in.  At  the  time  of  my 
inspection  the  noxious  gases  from  these  privies 
were  strongly  perceptible  in  every  part  of  the 
house." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Seventeenth  Ward  re- 
ports :  "The  privies  are  in  most  cases  in  the  rear 


76  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

court-yard.  In  about  two-thirds  of  the  houses 
the  privies  are  connected  with  the  sewer.  Over- 
flowing privies  are  frequently  found.  Some- 
times they  are  located  in  a  dark  place,  which 
in  all  cases  must  be  considered  an  evil.  Such 
is  the  case  in  some  houses  in  Rivington,  Stan- 
ton, Ninth  and  Eldridge  streets.  All  these  places 
are  filthy,  and  exceedingly  offensive  and  dan- 
gerous to  the  whole  neighborhood;  in  some 
places  the  foundation  of  the  privies  being  rotten 
and  broken,  and  fsecal  matter  runs  into  the 
cellar,  as  in  No.  —  'Extra  Place,'  where  diseases 
and  deaths  have  occurred.  The  contents  of  a 
privy  in  a  court  at  No.  —  Fifth  Street  have,  from 
a  similar  cause,  saturated  the  yard  of  premises 
on  the  Bowery,  where  several  children  died 
during  the  summer." 

1WILL  at  this  point  simply  allude  to  special 
nuisances.    New  York  has  within  the  narrow 
limits  of  its  present  occupied  area  of  about 
eight  square  miles,  in  addition  to  its  one  million 
of  people,  and  all  its  commercial  and  manufac- 
turing establishments,  a  vast  num- 
Special        ber  of  special  nuisances,  which  are. 
Nuisances     to    a   greater    or   less    degree,    de- 
trimental    to     its     public     health. 
There  are  nearly  200  slaughter-houses,  many  of 
which  are  in  the  most  densely  populated  dis- 
tricts.     To  these  places  droves  of  cattle,  hogs, 
and  sheep  are  constantly  driven,  rendering  the 


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REGION  OF  BONE-BOILING  AND  SWILL-MILK 
NUISANCES,  1865 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  81 


streets  filthy  in  tlie  extreme,  and  from  them  flow 
blood  and  refuse  of  the  most  disgusting  char- 
acter. 

In  certain  populous  sections  are  fat-boiling, 
entrails-cleansing,  and  tripe-curing  establish- 
ments, which  poison  the  air  for  squares  around 
with  their  stifling  emanations.  To  these  must 
be  added  hundreds  of  uncleaned  stables,  im- 
mense manure  heaps,  etc.,  etc.  But  I  shall  not 
dwell  further  on  these  subjects,  and  the  evidence 
regarding  them. 

I  PASS  from  the  consideration  of  the  external 
*    to  the  internal  domiciliary  conditions.     The 

poorer  classes  of  New  York  are  found  living 
either  in  cellars  or  in  tenement  houses.  It  is 
estimated  by  the  City  Inspector  that  18,000  per- 
sons live  in  cellars.  This 
Cellar  Population—      is    also    about    the    es- 

Dens  of  Death  timate     of     the     police. 

The  apartments  of  these 
people  are  not  the  light  and  airy  basement 
rooms  of  the  better  class  houses,  but  their 
homes  are,  in  the  worst  sense,  cellars.  These 
dark,  damp  and  dreary  abodes  are  seldom 
penetrated  by  a  ray  of  sunlight,  or  enlivened  by 
a  breath  of  fresh  air.  I  will  quote  several  de- 
scriptions from  these  reports.  In  the  Fourth 
Ward  many  of  these  cellars  are  below  tide 
water.     Says  the  Inspector  of  that  district: 

"This  submarine  region  is  not  only  excessively 


82  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

damp,  but  is  liable  to  sudden  inroads  from  the 
sea.  At  high  tide  the  water  often  wells  up 
through  the  floors,  submerging  them  to  a  con- 
siderable depth.  In  very  many  cases  the  vaults 
of  privies  are  situated  on  the  same  or  a  higher 
level,  and  their  contents  frequently  ooze 
through  the  walls  into  the  occupied  apartments 
beside  them.  Fully  one-fourth  of  these  sub- 
terranean domiciles  are  pervaded  by  a  most 
offensive  odor  from  this  source,  and  rendered 
exceedingly  unwholesome  as  human  habita- 
tions. These  are  the  places  in  which  we  most 
frequently  meet  with  typhoid  fever  and  dys- 
entery during  the  summer  months.  I  estimate 
the  amount  of  sickness  of  all  kinds  affecting  the 
residents  of  basements  and  cellars,  compared 
with  that  occurring  among  an  equal  number  of 
the  inhabitants  of  floors  above  ground,  as  being 
about  a  ratio  of  3  to  2." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Fifteenth  Ward  reports : 
"In  a  dark  and  damp  cellar,  about  18  feet  square 
and  7  feet  high,  lived  a  family  of  seven  persons; 
within  the  past  year  two  have  died  of  typhus, 
two  of  smallpox,  and  one  has  been  sent  to  the 
hospital  with  erysipelas.  The  tops  of  the  win- 
dows of  this  abode  are  below  the  level  of  the 
surface,  and  in  the  court  near  are  several  privies 
and  a  rear  tenant-house.  Yet  this  occurred  but 
a  short  distance  from  the  very  heart  of  the  city." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Ninth  Ward  writes :  "At 
Nos.  — ,  — ,  —  and  —  Hammond  Street,  and  also 


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TRANSVERSE  SECTIONAL  VIEW  OF  ROOKERY   BETWEEN 
BROADWAY  AND  BOWERY,  1865 

In  its  dark,  damp  cellar,  18  feet  square  by  7  high,  lived  7  persons 

L,  Living  Room;  D,  Dormitory 


84  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

at  No.  —  Washington  Street,  are  inhabited  cel- 
lars, the  ceilings  of  which  are  below  the  level 
of  the  street,  inaccessible  to  the  rays  of  the  sun, 
and  always  damp  and  dismal.  Three  of  them 
are  flooded  at  every  heavy  rain,  and  require  to 
be  baled  out.  They  are  let  at  a  somewhat 
smaller  rent  than  is  asked  for  apartments  on  an 
upper  floor,  and  are  rented  by  those  to  whom 
poverty  leaves  no  choice.  They  are  rarely  va- 
cant." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Seventeenth  Ward  states 
that:  "In  17  squares  55  houses  contain  246  per- 
sons living  in  cellars  entirely  underground.  As 
a  matter  of  course  such  cellars  are  unhealthy 
dwelling  apartments.  Stanton  Place  has  some 
of  these  miserable  cellar-apartments,  in  which 
diseases  have  been  generated.  These  cellars 
are  entirely  subterranean,  dark  and  damp." 

THE  Inspector  of  the  Sixth  Ward  says :  "There 
has  been  some  improvement  within  the  last 
few   years  —  the    cellar    population    having 
been    perceptibly    decreased,    yet    496    persons 
still  live  in  damp   and  unwholesome  quarters 
under    ground.       In    some    of 
W6  Persons        them    water    was    discovered 
Under  Ground     trickling  down  the  walls,  the 
source    of    which    was    some- 
times traced  to  the  courts  and  alleys,  and  some- 
times  to   the   soakage  from   the  water-closets. 
The  noxious   effluvia   always  present  in  these 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN 


85 


basements  are  of  a  sickening  character.  Many 
of  the  cellars  are  occupied  by  two  or  three  fam- 
ilies; a  number  are  also  occupied  as  lodging- 
houses,  accommodating  from  twenty  to  thirty 
lodgers.  One,  near  the  corner  of  Elm  and 
Worth  streets,  is  now  fifteen  or  sixteen  feet  be- 
low the  level  of  the  street  (the  street  having  been 
raised  ten  feet).  The  lodging-house  keeper 
complained  to  the  Inspector  that  her  business 
had  fallen  off  some  since  the  street  was  raised. 
As  might  be  expected,  the  sickness  rate  is  very 
high;  rheumatic  disease,  fevers,  strumous  dis- 
eases, cholera  infantum,  etc.,  etc.,  running  riot 
among  the  population.  Indeed,  in  nearly  every 
basement  disease  of  some  kind  has  been  found 

peculiarly   prev- 


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PLAN  OF  CELLAR  IN  THE  SIXTEENTH 
WARD,  1865,  OCCUPIED  BY  T\V0 
FAMILIES,  EACH  WITH  A  DARK 
LIVING-ROOM,  AND  A  DARK,  DAMP 
DORMITORY 


alent  and  fatal." 
Another  In- 
spector says :  "At 
No.  —  West  Six- 
teenth Street, 
two  families,  in 
which  are  thir- 
teen persons,  oc- 
cupy the  base- 
ment. It  is  so 
dark  that  ordi- 
nary type  can  be 
seen  with  diffi- 
culty. In the  other 
case   the   peo- 


86  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


^>^*T>f*^.iit«yiY.r,t^^  fawnfrnf 


pie  were  healthy  before  entering  the  basement; 
since,  however,  they  have  been  ill;  the  mother 
has  phthisis.  Of  twenty-four  cellars,  note  of 
which  has  been  made,  four  only  were  in  good 
sanitary  condition.  The  rest  were  more  or  less 
filthy,  some  indescribably  so.  One  contained 
urine,  bones,  and  soakage  from  the  privy." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Eighteenth  Ward  writes : 
"There  are  a  few  cellars  so  dark  that  one  cannot 
see  to  read  in  them,  unless  by  artificial  light, 
except  for  a  few  hours  in  the  day,  by  sitting 
close  to  the  window;  and  there  are  many  base- 
ment rooms  into  whose  gloomy  recesses  not  a 
single  direct  ray  from  the  sun  ever  shone.  The 
latter  are,  as  a  rule,  by  half  their  depth  below 
the  level  of  the  street.  Dark  and  damp,  with 
very  little  chance  for  circulation  of  air,  it  would 
be  difficult  to  imagine  a  human  being  more  com- 
pletely beyond  reach  of  sanitary  provisions. 
And  when  we  consider  that  four  large  families 
often  crowd  this  subterranean  floor,  no  words 
are  needed  to  show  their  condition  deplorable. 
That  a  generally  impaired  vitality  is  promoted 
by  living  in  this  unnatural  way,  'a  nameless, 
ever  new  disease,'  there  can  be  no  question; 
that  these  people  will  be  especially  prone  to 
whatever  form  of  prevailing  sickness  may  be 
about  in  the  community,  no  one  can  doubt;  but 
whether  there  is  any  specific  cause  involved, 
capable  of  producing  definite  forms  of  disease, 
is  more  difficult  to  determine." 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  87 


AN  Inspector  thus  describes  a  visit  to  one  of 
tiiese  subterranean  abodes:  "We  enter  a 
room  whose  low  ceiling  is  blackened  with 
smoke,  and  its  walls  discolored  with  damp.  In 
front,  opening  on  a  narrow  area  covered  with 
green  mould,  two  small  win- 
A  Visit  to  the  dows,  their  tops  scarcely  level 
Cave-Dwellers  with  the  court-yard,  afford  at 
noonday  a  twilight  illumina- 
tion to  the  apartment.  Through  their  broken 
panes  they  admit  the  damp  air  laden  with  ef- 
fluvia, which  constitutes  the  vital  atmosphere 
inhaled  by  all  who  are  immured  in  this  dismal 
abode.  A  door  at  the  back  of  this  room  commu- 
nicates with  another  which  is  entirely  dark,  and 
has  but  this  one  opening.  Both  rooms  together 
have  an  area  of  about  eighteen  feet  square. 

"The  father  of  the  family,  a  day  laborer,  is 
absent.  The  mother,  a  wrinkled  crone  at  thirty, 
sits  rocking  in  her  arms  an  infant  whose  pasty 
and  pallid  features  tell  that  decay  and  death 
are  usurping  the  place  of  health  and  life.  Two 
older  children  are  in  the  street,  which  is  their 
only  playground,  and  the  only  place  where  they 
can  go  to  breathe  an  atmosphere  that  is  even 
comparatively  pure.  A  fourth  child,  emaciated 
to  a  skeleton,  and  with  that  ghastly  and  un- 
earthly look  which  marasmus  impresses  on  its 
victims,  has  reared  his  feeble  frame  on  a  rickety 
chair  against  the  window  sill,  and  is  striving  to 
get  a  glimpse  of  the  smiling  heavens,  whose 


88  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

light  is  so  seldom  permitted  to  gladden  its  long- 
ing eyes.  Its  youth  has  battled  nobly  against 
the  terrible  morbid  and  devitalizing  agents 
which  have  oppressed  its  childish  life  —  the 
poisonous  air,  the  darkness,  and  the  damp;  but 
the  battle  is  nearly  over  —  it  is  easy  to  decide 
where  the  victory  will  be." 

But  I  need  not  multiply  the  evidences  that 
18,000  people,  men,  women,  and  children  (a 
goodly-sized  town),  are  to-day  living  in  our 
city  in  a  condition  the  most  destructive  to 
health,  happiness,  and  morals  that  could  pos- 
sibly be  devised.  As  you  look  into  these  abodes 
of  wretchedness,  filth  and  disease,  the  inmates 
manifest  the  same  lethargic  habits  as  animals, 
burrowing  in  the  ground.  They  are,  indeed, 
half  narcotized  by  the  constant  inhalation  of  the 
emanations  of  their  own  bodies,  and  by  a  pro- 
longed absence  of  light  and  fresh  air.  Here  we 
never  find  sound  health,  while  the  constant  sick- 
ness rate  ranges  from  75  to  90  per  cent. 

OW,  as  to  the  second  condition  under  which 
we  find  the  laboring  classes.     It  is  estimated 
by  the  police  that  the  tenant-house  popula- 
tion of  New  York  reaches  the  enormous  figure 
of  500,000  or  about  half  of  the 
Tenant-House     total    number    of    inhabitants. 
Population       The  great  and  striking  fact  in 
regard      to      the      domiciliary 
condition    of   the    tenant-house    class   is    over- 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN 


89 


crowding  and  deficient  sunlight  and  fresh  air. 
The  landlord  of  the  poor  tenant-house  has  two 
principal  motives  —  first,  to  pack  as  many  peo- 
ple as  he  can  in  a  given  space,  and  second,  to 
make  as  few  improvements  and  repairs  as  pos- 
sible. 

The   tenant-houses   are   of   two   classes,   viz., 
the  front  and  the  rear.     The  latter  is  closely 

Tliird  Avenice. 


4 


FEOirr 

No.  TO. 

No.  68. 

DWELLINGS. 

NO.  98 

98 
Eear. 

h          Eear. 

68 

Eear. 

Stable. 
22 

No.  22 

iro.96 

No.  20 

^ 


PLAN  SHOWING  REAR  TENANT-HOUSES,  NEAR  A  STABLE, 
IN  THE  SEVENTEENTH  WARD,  1865 

allied  to  the  cellar;  being  shut  out  from  air  and 
sunlight,  it  is  generally  damp,  gloomy,  and 
filthy.  The  space  between  the  front  and  rear 
house,  familiarly  called  the  "well  hole,"  con- 
tains the  privy  and  cesspool,  the  emanations 
from  which  are  closely  confined  to  this  space, 
and  slowly  but  constantly  prevade  with  their 
disgusting  odors  all  the  rooms  and  recesses. 
The    tenant-house    has    freq.uently   been    de- 


90  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

■^■^■IM^^i^lMMi^^BMOIiM—W ^M— ^^B^—M — a^t^«—i^milllWIIMI«I^M— M!^— M— aaiMHIIimi  mill 

scribed  by  sensation  writers,  with  ail  its  mis- 
eries, its  diseases  and  its  deaths.  But  no  pen 
nor  pencil  can  sketch  the  living  reality.  It  is 
only  by  personal  inspection  that  one  can  learn 
to  what  deptlis  of  social  and  physical  degrada- 
tion human  beings  can  descend.  Said  a  com- 
mittee appointed  by  your  body  to  investigate 
the  condition  of  the  tenant-houses  of  New  York : 
"Sitting  together  upon  the  same  broken  box, 
lying  together  upon  the  same  dirty  straw,  cov- 
ered by  the  same  filthy  shreds,  vieing  with  each 
other  in  the  utterance  of  foul  obscenities,  you 
have  a  picture  of  tiie  mass  of  corruption  and 
squalid  misery  gathered  inside  the  walls  of  that 
unventilated  building  in  Mission  Place.  In  that 
single  house  there  was  that  which  naade  the  soul 
sicken  and  turn  in  horror  from  the  sight.  Vice, 
with  its  pretentious  brow,  and  wretchedness, 
with  hollow  cheek  and  sunken,  glazed  eye,  were 
there;  hunger  and  lust  stood  side  by  side,  petit 
larceny  and  cold-blooded  murder  were  holding 
converse." 

THE  inspectors  describe  more  or  less  minutely 
a  large  number  of  tenant-houses,  and  also 
of  groups : 
"  'Gat  Alley'  is  the  local  designation  of  a  group 
of  dilapidated  tenant-houses  in  an  alley  on 
Cannon  Street.  The  alley  is  unpaved,  and  is 
excessively  filthy.  The  privy  is  a  small  and 
broken-down  structure,  covering  only  a  part  of 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  91 


the  vault,  which  is  now  full  almost  to  overflow- 
ing. The  inhabitants  are  degraded,  both 
Q^f  physically  and  socially.  In  several  of 
Allen  ^^^  domiciles,  at  the  time  of  our  last  in- 
spection, there  was  neither  bedstead  nor 
table.  Twelve  of  these  families  were  found  in  a 
wretched  condition,  and  all  the  children  we  saw 
were  covered  with  dirt,  and  presented  the  in- 
tensest  aspects  of  scrofulous  disease;  their  sore 
eyes,  encrusted  heads,  and  dehumanizing  ap- 
pearance, told  the  story  of  want  and  neglect,  and 
of  greater  evils  to  come. 

"Five  small  houses,  two  and  a  half  stories  in 
height,  including  the  basements,  each  contain- 
ing apartments  for  six  families,  front  on  an  alley 
called  Rivington  Place.  This  alley  is  always  in 
a  filthy  condition.  The  houses  on  it  are  small 
and  overcrowded.  The  30  families  that  reside 
in  these  five  houses  have  no  other  water  supply 
than  that  which  two  hydrants  furnish  in  the  ex- 
terior courtyard;  while  for  this  population  of 
nearly  200  persons,  of  all  ages,  there  are  but  two 
privy  vaults,  and,  at  the  time  of  the  last  inspec- 
tion of  the  quarters,  these  vaults  were  filled 
nearly  to  the  surface.  In  the  year  1849,  42  in- 
dividuals died  here  in  three  weeks  of  cholera, 
and  not  one  recovered  that  was  taken  sick.  The 
reasons  are  plain :  they  have  no  ventilation,  and 
the  houses  being  double,  the  exhalations  from 
one  apartment  are  inhaled  by  the  other. 

"At    No.    —    West    Twenty-fifth    Street,    a 


m  ^  ^:..'if^ri3^ 


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NEW  YORK,  THE   UNCLEAN  93 


wretched  tenement  of  two  apartments,  the 
rooms  occupied  by  one  familty.  The  sitting- 
room  is  about  10x12  feet,  and  the  bedroom 
about  5x12,  without  a  single  window  or  air  hole. 
These  rooms  were  occupied  in  the  hot  month  of 
July  by  a  colored  female,  having  pulmonary 
consumption,  and  her  two  children.  Here  she 
died,  shortly  after  we  made  the  inspection  of 
her  domicilium;  having  no  money  nor  friends, 
a  Christian  burial  was  denied  her  for  four  days, 
although  the  neighbors  acquainted  the  police  of 
the  fact,  and  they  the  Health  Warden." 

^^r>AG  PICKERS  ROW"  is  thus   described: 
IV.   "The   houses   are   of  wood,   two   stories, 
with  attic  and  basement.  The  attic  rooms 
are  used  to  deposit  the  filthy  rags  and  bones  as 
they    are    taken    from    gutters    and    slaughter- 
houses. The  yards  are  filled  with 
Rag  Pickers       dirty  rags  hung  up  to  dry,  send- 
Row  ing  forth  their  stench  to  all  the 

neighborhood,  and  are  exceed- 
ingly nauseous,  operating  upon  me  as  an  emetic. 
The  tenants  are  all  Germans  of  the  lowest  order, 
having  no  national  nor  personal  pride;  they  are 
exceedingly  filthy  in  person,  and  their  bed- 
clothes are  as  dirty  as  the  floors  they  walk  on; 
their  food  is  of  the  poorest  quality,  and  their 
feet  and  heads,  and  doubtless  their  whole 
bodies,  are  anasarcous,  suffering  from  what  they 
call    rheumatism,    but    which    is    in    reality    a 


94  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


prostrate  nervous  system,  the  result  of  foul  air 
air  and  inadequate  supply  of  nutritious  food. 
They  have  a  peculiar  taste  for  the  association 
of  dogs  and  cats,  there  being  about  50  of  the 
former  and  30  of  the  latter.  The  whole  number 
of  apartments  is  32,  occupied  by  28  families, 
number  120  in  all,  60  adults  and  60  children. 
The  yards  are  all  small,  and  the  sinks  running 
over  with  filth." 

5 AYS  a  visitor  in  the  Eighth  Ward:  "The  in- 
stances are  many  in  which  one  or  more  fam- 
ilies, of  from  three  to  seven  or  more  mem- 
bers, of  all  ages  and  both  sexes,  are  congre- 
gated in  a  single  and  often  contracted  apart- 
ment.     Here   they  eat,   drink, 
Tenant-House       sleep,  work,  dress  and  undress, 
Degeneration       without  the  possibility  of  that 
privacy  which  an  innate  mod- 
esty imperatively  demands.     In  sickness  and  in 
health  it  is  the  same. 

"What  is  the  consequence?  The  sense  of 
shame  —  the  greatest,  surest  safeguard  of  vir- 
tue, except  the  grace  of  God  —  is  gradually 
blunted,  ruined,  and  finally  destroyed.  New 
scenes  are  witnessed  and  participated  in,  with 
a  countenance  of  brass,  the  very  thought  of 
which,  once,  would  have  filled  the  sensitive 
heart  of  modesty  with  pain,  ad  covered  its  cheek 
with  burning  blushes.  The  mind  of  one  thus 
brought  in  daily  and  nightly  contact  with  such 


!'">'.  ■J  V'S?f«)m  >iii 


GOTHAM  COURT,  ON  CHERRY  STREET,  1865 


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NEW   YORK,    THE    UNCLEAN  97 


scenes  must  become  greatly  debased,  and  its 
fall,  before  the  assaults  of  vice,  rendered  almost 
certain." 

Another  writes:  "These  houses  seem  to  be 
always  open  to  newcomers,  and,  in  some  way 
or  other,  they  can  accommodate  them.  I  have 
found  three  families,  of  men,  women,  and  chil- 
dren, in  one  room;  there  they  lived  and  there 
they  slept.  Can  any  one  doubt  that  there  must 
be  a  rapid  declension  of  morals  in  both  parents 
and  children,  or  that  a  bar  is  here  opposed  to 
moral  and  religious  instruction,  or  that  this 
state  of  things  is  consequent  on  the  circum- 
stances and  condition  of  life?" 

I  could  give  you  many  details  of  other  tenant- 
houses,  the  reputation  of  which  is  a  reproach 
to  any  city  in  the  civilized  world.  Such  is 
"Gotham  Court,"  "Rotten  Row,"  "The  Great 
Eastern,"  "Sebastopol,"  "Quality  Row,"  "Rum- 
mer's Retreat,"  etc.  Speaking  of  the  tenant- 
house,  the  Rev.  Dr.  Muhlenburg  says : 

"  'Their  homes !'  that  cold  and  damp  cellar, 
about  as  tenantable  as  your  coal  vault!  Do  you 
call  that  a  home  for  the  distressed  body, 
crowded  in  one  corner  there,  swollen  with  the 
pains  of  rheumatism?  Or  that  close  apartment, 
heated  or  stifling  in  preparing  the  evening  meal, 
on  the  shattered  stove  —  that  suffocating  room, 
where  you  would  not  stop  within  for  a  moment 
—  is  that  the  home  which  you  think  so  favor- 
able  for   the   worn   asthmatic,   catching   every 


98 


THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


breath  as  if  the  last?  Ask  any  clergyman,  he 
will  tell  you  with  how  little  satisfaction  he 
makes  his  visits  among  the  poor,  when  they  are 
laboring  among  disease;  how  he  never  has  the 


"THE  GREAT  EASTERN,"  NUMBER  115  EAST  37TH  STREET, 

1865 

heart  to  speak  of  comfort  for  the  soul,  when 
discomforts  of  the  body  call  so  loudly  for  re- 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN 


lief,  and  for  which  the  scanty  aid  he  can  min- 
ister seems  akin  to  mockery!" 

MR.  N.  P.  WILLIS  who  witnessed  the  "draft" 
riots  thus  truthfully  and  graphically  de- 
scribes the  inmates  of  tenant-houses: 
"The  high  brick  blocks  and  closely  packed 
houses  where  the  mobs  originated,  seemed  to 
be  literally  hives  of  sickness  and  vice. 
The       It  was  wonderful  to  see,  and  difficult  to 
Rioters    believe,  that  so  much  misery,  disease 
and  wretchedness  can  be  huddled  to- 
gether and  hidden  by  high  walls,  unvisited  and 
unthought  of,  so  near  our  own  abodes.     Lewd, 
but  pale  and  sickly  young  women,  scarce  decent 
in  their  ragged  attire,  were  impudent  and  scat- 
tered everywhere  in  the  crowd.    But  what  num- 
bers of  these  poorer  classes   are   deformed  — 
what  numbers  are  made  hideous  by  self -neglect 
and    infirmity!       Alas!    human    faces    look    so 
hideous  with  hope  and  self-respect  all  gone! 
And  female  forms  and  features  are  made  so 
frightful  by  sin,  squalor,  and  debasement!     To 
walk  the  streets  as  we  walked  them,  in  those 
hours  of  conflagration  and  riot,  was  like  wit- 
nessing the  day  of  judgment,  with  every  wicked 
thing  revealed,  every  sin  and  sorrow  blazingly 
glared  upon,  every  hidden  abomation  laid  bare 
before  hell's  expectant  fire?      The  elements  of 
popular  discord  are  gathered  in  these  wretch- 
edly constructed  tenement  houses,  where  pov- 


100  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

erty,  disease,  and  crime  find  an  abode.  Here 
disease  in  its  most  loathsome  forms  propagates 
itself.  Unholy  passions  rule  in  the  domestic 
circle.  Everything,  within  and  without,  tends 
to  phj^sical  and  moral  degradation." 

5UCH,  Mr.  Chairman,  is  the  external  and  in- 
ternal sanitary  condition  of  the  homes  of 
500,000  people  in  the  City  of  New  York  to- 
day, as  revealed  by  this  inspection.     It  requires 
no  extraordinary  amount  of  medical  knowledge 
to  determine  the  physical  condi- 
Tenant-House     tion  of  this  immense  population. 
Rot  living  under  such  circumstances. 

Even  though  no  devastating 
epidemic  is  found  ravaging  the  tenant-house, 
yet  the  first  sight  of  the  wretched  inmates  con- 
vinces you  that  diseases  far  more  destructive  to 
health  and  happiness,  because  creating  no 
alarm,  are  wasting  the  vital  energies,  and  slowly 
but  surely  consuming  the  very  tissues  of  the 
body. 

Here  infantile  life  unfolds  its  bud,  but  per- 
ishes before  its  first  anniversary.  Here  youth 
is  ugly  with  loathsome  diseases  and  the  de- 
formities which  follow  physical  degeneracy. 
Here  the  decrepitude  of  old  age  is  found  at 
thirty.  The  poor  themselves  have  a  very  ex- 
pressive term  for  the  slow  process  of  decay 
which  they  suffer,  viz.:  "Tenant-house  Rot." 
The  great  majority  are,  indeed,  undergoing  a 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  101 

slow  decomposition  ^—  a  true  eremacausis,  as 
the  chemists  term  it.  And  with  this  physical 
degeneration  we  find  mental  and  moral  de- 
terioration. The  frequent  expression  of  the 
poor,  "We  have  no  sickness,  thank  God,"  is 
uttered  by  those  whose  sunken  eyes,  pale 
cheeks,  and  colorless  lips  speak  more  eloquently 
than  words,  of  the  unseen  agencies  which  are 
sapping  the  fountains  of  health.  Vice,  crime, 
drunkenness,  lust,  disease,  and  death,  here  hold 
sway,  in  spite  of  the  most  powerful  moral  and 
religious  influences. 

Religious  teachers  and  Bible  readers  are  be- 
ginning to  give  this  class  over,  as  past  all 
remedy,  until  their  physical  condition  is  im- 
proved. Their  intellects  are  so  blunted  and 
their  perceptions  so  perverted  by  the  noxious 
atmosphere  which  they  breathe,  and  the  all- 
pervading  filth  in  which  they  live,  move,  and 
have  their  being,  that  they  are  not  susceptible 
to  moral  or  religious  influences.  In  London, 
some  of  the  city  missionaries  have  entirely 
abandoned  the  tenant-house  class.  There  is,  un- 
doubtedly, a  depraved  physical  condition  which 
explains  the  moral  deterioration  of  these  peo- 
ple, and  which  can  never  be  overcome  until  we 
surround  them  with  the  conditions  of  sound 
health.  A  child  growing  up  in  this  pestilential 
atmosphere  becomes  vicious  and  brutal,  not 
from  any  natural  depravity,  but  because  it  is 
mentally  incapable  of  the  perceptions  of  truth. 


102  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

Most  truly  does  the  Inspector  of  the  Fourth 
Ward  say: 

ii'X'HERE    is    a    tenant-house    cachexy    well- 
1    known  to  such  medical  men  as  have  a 
practical  acquaintance  with  these  abodes; 
nor  does  it  affect  alone  the  physical  condition 
of  their  inmates.     It  has  its  moral  prototype  in 
an  ochlesis   of  vice  —  a   conta- 
Tenant-House     gious      depravity,      to      whose 
Cachexy         malign   influence    the   youthful 
survivors  of  the  terrible  phys- 
ical evils  to  which  their  infancy  is  exposed,  are 
sure  to  succumb.     We  often  find  in  persons  of 
less  than  middle  age,  who  have  long  occupied 
such  confined  and  filthy  premises,  a  morbid  con- 
dition of  the  system  unknown  elsewhere.     The 
eye  becomes  bleared,  the  senses  blunted,   the 
limbs  shrunken  and  tremulous,  the  secretions 
excedingly  offensive.      There  is  a  state  of  pre- 
mature decay. 

"In  this  condition  of  life  the  ties  of  nature 
seem  to  be  unloosed.  Maternal  instinct  and  filial 
affection  seem  to  participate  in  the  general  de- 
cay of  soul  and  body.  A  kind  Providence,  whose 
hand  is  visible  even  here,  mercifully  provides 
that  the  almost  inevitable  decay  and  death 
which  man's  criminal  neglect  entails  on  the  off- 
spring of  the  unfortunate  who  dwell  in  these 
dreary  mansions,  shall  elicit  comparatively 
feeble  pangs  of  parental  anguish.    To  the  phys- 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  103 


ical  and  moral  degradation,  the  blight  of  these 
miserable  abodes,  where  decay  reigns  supreme 
over  habitation  and  inhabitant  alike,  may  be 
plainly  traced  much  of  the  immorality  and 
crime  which  prevail  among  us.  The  established 
truth,  that,  as  the  corporeal  frame  deteriorates, 
man's  spiritual  nature  is  liable  also  to  degen- 
erate, receives  its  apt  illustration  here." 

BUT,  sir,  acute  diseases,  and  those  frequently 
of  the  most  destructive  character,  prevail  at 
all  seasons  among  the  tenant-house  popula- 
tion, and  generally  wdth  fearful  fatality.      Al- 
though the  last  summer  and  autumn  were  un- 
usually healthy,  these  records  show 
Prevailing      the  prevalence   of  a  vast  amount 
Diseases       of  diseases  among  the  poor  of  New 
York.       These    diseases    are    of    a 
kind  that  always  originate  in  or  are  aggravated 
by   the   crowding   of   families   in    unventilated 
apartments,  want  of  sunlight  and  pure  air,  house 
and  street  filth,  etc. 

First  Ward:  The  diseases  prevalent  in  this 
district  the  past  season  have  been  principally 
typhus,  measles,  diarrhoea,  dysentery,  cholera 
morbus,  cholera  infantum,  and  marasmus. 
Diarrhoeal  diseases  are  most  prevalent  in  those 
insalubrious  quarters  already  described,  and  at 
a  season  when  the  exciting  causes  are  at  their 
greatest  stage  of  development  and  activity. 
Second  and  Third  Wards :  Typhus  fever  made 


104  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

its  appearance  in  tenant-houses,  and  in  two  oi? 
three  instances  spread  through  all  the  families 
immediately  exposed.  At  one  place  the  disease 
attacked  successively  every  member  of  the  fam- 
ily immediately  exposed,  but  was  prevented 
from  spreading  further  by  free  ventilation. 

Fifth  Ward :  The  slips,  in  consequence  of  re- 
ceiving the  sewerage  of  the  district  and  sur- 
rounding parts  of  the  city,  are  generally  foul 
and  the  undoubted  source  of  much  sickness. 
Smallpox  has  prevailed  more  extensively  than 
for  many  years  back.  Typhus  and  typhoid  fe- 
vers have  been  prevalent  over  the  whole  district. 

Eighth  Ward:  The  prevailing  diseases  of  the 
past  season  have  been  fevers  of  the  typhus, 
typhoid,  remittent  and  intermittent  types,  chol- 
era infantum,  scarlatina,  dysentery,  and  diar- 
rhoea, all  confined  to  densely  populated  tene- 
ments. The  typhus  and  typhoid  fevers  have 
been  of  a  malignant  type  in  two  houses,  twelve 
out  of  eighteen  cases  proving  fatal. 

Ninth  Ward:  The  prevailing  diseases  during 
the  past  season  have  been  typhoid  fever,  dys- 
entery, diarrhoea,  scarlet  fever,  measles,  and  a 
few  cases  of  variola. 

5IXTH   Ward:    The    seeds    of    disease    exist 
'  everywhere,   and   although   removable   and 
susceptible  of  sanitary  control,  they  are  yet 
uncontrolled,  and  at  any  time  may  spring  into 
activity  and  a  terrific  life,  that  shall  only  have 


NEW   YORK,    THE    UNCLEAN  105 

the  power  and  effect  of  death.    Cholera,  when 

it  visits  these  shores  again. 
Seeds  of  Disease     will       first      break       forth 

Uncontrolled  ^^re,  if  proper  sanitary 
measures  be  neglected.  Ty- 
phus fever  nests  exist  in  ail  parts  of  the  district; 
and  it  has  been  traced  from  these  nests  to  every 
ward  in  the  city,  spreading  the  disease  not  only 
in  the  worst  localities,  but  into  the  homes  of  the 
industrious,  the  wealthy,  and  the  highest  classes 
of  society.  This  disease  is  now  on  the  increase, 
and  if  proper  sanitary  measures  are  not  adopted 
to  remove  the  predisposing  and  the  infecting 
causes,  we  may  again  have  an  epidemic  of  that 
scourge. 

Fourteenth  Ward :  There  have  been  attended 
in  this  district,  during  the  last  year,  over  200 
cases  of  typhoid  and  typhus  fever  by  one  dispen- 
sary physician;  also,  70  cases  of  dysentery,  and 
50  cases  of  smallpox.  There  is  one  particular 
locality  which  has  contributed  to  the  spread 
and  intensity  of  the  fever  contagion,  viz.:  the 
little  street  known  as  Jersey  Street.  It  is  always 
filthy,  and  the  effluvia  arising  therefrom  is  ex- 
tremely offensive.  The  privies  are  generally 
full  nearly  to  overflowing,  and  the  yards  are 
also  in  a  dirty  condition,  heaps  of  refuse  matter 
being  allowed  to  remain  and  to  accumulate  con- 
tinually in  many  of  them.  There  is  no  sewer 
in  this  little  street,  though  the  streets  at  each 
end  are  sewered. 


A   PERPETUAL   FEVER-NEST:     REAR   TENANT-HOUSES 
IN  WASHINGTON  STREET,  1865 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  107 


TENTH   WARD:     The   most  prominent   dis- 
eases   during    the    past    year    have    been 
phthisis,  typhoid  and  scarlet  fevers,  cholera 
infantum,  dysentery,  smallpox,  and  diphtheria. 
They    were    most    prevalent    in    the    poorest 
part  of  the  district,  having  the 
Where  Disease    lowest    ground,     the    filthiest 

Flourishes  streets,  and  the  most  dense 
population  of  poor  and  care- 
less people,  who  are  crowded  in  the  numerous 
tenant-houses,  shanties,  and  small  dwellings, 
which  were  built  for  one  or  two  families,  but 
are  now  made  to  contain  from  five  to  ten. 

Nineteenth  Ward:  The  diseases  that  have 
chiefly  prevailed  during  the  past  season  are  dys- 
entery, diarrhoea,  cholera  morbus,  cholera  in- 
fantum and  the  exanthematous  fevers.  They 
were  of  the  most  frequent  occurrence  in  the 
most  crowded  and  insalubrious  quarters. 

Fifteenth  Ward :  Since  the  commencement  of 
the  survey,  scarlet  fever,  typhoid  fever,  small- 
pox, and  cholera  infantum  have  prevailed  in 
the  tenant-houses  of  this  ward.  Six  cases  of 
smallpox  occurred  in  one  of  three  thickly  peo- 
pled rows  of  such  dwellings,  and  the  disease 
was  communicated  to  a  child  in  an  adjacent 
street,  who  had  been  playing  in  the  infected 
neighborhood.  Seven  cases  of  typhoid  also  oc- 
curred in  a  court  among  children,  and  this  was 
within  a  few  doors  of  better  class  houses. 

Eleventh  Ward:  Typhus  and  typhoid  fevers 


108  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

have  been  found  prevailing  in  all  sections  of  this 
district.  Smallpox,  scarlatina,  measles,  and 
pulmonary  diseases  are  met  with  in  almost 
every  street.  Typhus  is  the  most  typical  of  the 
preventable  diseases  that  abound  in  the 
Eleventh  "Ward.  Cholera  infantum  and  ob- 
stinate diarrhoeal  maladies  were  prevalent  in 
the  rear  tenements  and  throughout  the  lowest 
streets  during  the  summer  and  autumn. 

To  give  you  an  idea  of  the  wide  prevalence  of 
these  diseases,  I  will  notice  one  or  two  more  in 
detail. 

SMALLPOX  is  the  very  type  of  preventable 
diseases.  We  have  a  safe  and  sure  prevent- 
ive in  thorough  vaccination.  And  yet  this 
loathsome  disease  is  at  this  moment  an  epidemic 
in  New  York.  In  two  days'  time,  the  inspectors 
found  644  cases,  and  in  two  weeks. 
Smallpox  upward  of  1,200;  and  it  was  es- 
timated that  only  about  one-half 
were  discovered.  In  many  large  tenant-houses, 
six,  eight,  and  ten  cases  were  found  at  the  same 
time.  They  found  it  under  every  conceivable 
condition  tending  to  promote  its  communicabil- 
ity.  It  was  in  the  street  cars,  in  the  stages,  in 
the  hacks,  on  the  ferry-boats,  in  junk-shops,  in 
cigar-stores,  in  candy-shops,  in  the  families  of 
tailors  and  seamstresses,  who  were  making 
clothing  for  wholesale  stores,  in  public  and 
in  private  charities.     I  hold  in  my  hand  a  list 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  109 


of  cases  of  smallpox  found  existing  under  cir- 
cumstances which  show  how  widespread  is  this 
disease.  Bedding  of  a  fatal  case  of  smallpox 
was  sold  to  a  rag-man;  case  in  a  room  where 
candy  and  daily  papers  were  sold;  case  on  a 
ferry-boat;  woman  was  attending  bar  and  acting 
as  nurse  to  her  husband  who  had  smallpox; 
girl  was  making  cigars  while  scabs  were  falling 
from  her  skin;  seamstress  was  making  shirts 
for  a  Broadway  store,  one  of  which  was  thrown 
over  the  cradle  of  a  child  sick  of  smallpox;  tail- 
ors making  soldiers'  clothing,  have  their  chil- 
dren, from  whom  the  scabs  were  falling, 
wrapped  in  the  garments;  a  woman  selling 
vegetables  had  the  scabs  falling  from  her  face, 
among  the  vegetables,  etc.,  etc.  Instances  of 
this  kind  can  be  quoted  at  any  length,  but  these 
examples  are  sufficient  to  show  that  smallpox 
spreads  uncontrolled  throughout  our  city.  And 
they  show,  too,  how  this  disease  is  disseminated 
abroad.  Says  the  Inspector  of  the  Fourth 
Ward: 

<<J  N  localities  where  smallpox  prevailed  I 
*  found,  in  some  instances  within  a  few  feet 
of  the  patients,  tailors  at  work  for  our  best 
clothing  establishments.  Such  infected  vest- 
ments —  worse  than  the  tunic  of  the  Centaur  — • 
bring  disease  and  death  not  only  to  the  wearers, 
but  to  many  others.  The  occupant  of  the 
crowded   tenant-house   procures   from   such   a 


110  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


source  a  coat  or  a  blanket,  and  soon  a  loath- 
some   pest    attacks    the 
Smallpox  in  Tailored      young  and  unprotected 
Garments  members  of  his  family, 

and  ultimately  spreads 
through  the  entire  quarter,  destroying  life  after 
life  and  endangering  the  health  of  a  whole  com- 
munity. 

"Smallpox,  suddenly  breaking  out  in  some 
secluded  rural  district,  often  owes  its  un- 
suspected origin  to  the  above  causes.  In  the 
remote  solitude  of  the  ocean  the  seaman  opens 
the  chest  in  which  he  has  deposited  such  ob- 
noxious apparel,  and  from  this  Pandora's  box 
scatters  the  seeds  of  pestilence  among  his  com- 
rades, which,  ripening,  shall  spread  its  germs 
to  distant  ports." 

Or,  what  is  more  striking,  take  the  following 
from  the  report  of  the  Inspector  of  the  Fifth 
Ward: 

"The  largest  wholesale  establishments  for  the 
sale  of  dry  goods  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic 
Ocean  are  in  immediate  contact  with  the  tenant- 
houses  of  the  worst  class,  and  which  are  infested 
with  smallpox  and  typhus  fever.  The  two 
freight  depots  and  the  principal  passenger  depot 
of  the  Railroad  Company  are  in  the  same  close 
association  with  these  nests  of  infection.  In  the 
region  immediately  surrounding  are  also  sit- 
uated several  hotels,  and  a  large  number  of 
boarding-houses,  whose  inmates  are  thus  in  dan- 


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A  REGION  OF  SMALLPOX  AND  TYPHUS  FEVER,  1865 


112  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


ger  of  personal  contact  with  these  diseases  any 
moment.  West  Broadway,  running  through  the 
very  centre  of  the  district,  is  traversed  by  five 
different  lines  of  railway  cars,  with  an  average 
of  five  cars  passing  every  minute,  and  carrying 
millions  of  passengers  yearly  by  the  very  doors 
of  these  houses.  Broadway,  at  but  a  short  dis- 
tance removed,  is  the  principal  thoroughfare  of 
the  citv.  Hudson  Street  on  the  west  is  also  a 
leading  route  for  city  travel;  and  the  cross 
streets  of  the  district  are  traversed  daily  by  mul- 
titudes to  reach  various  lines  of  steamboats, 
cars,  and  steamships,  which  leave  the  city  op- 
posite this  point. 

"All  this  large  amount  of  daily  travel  passes 
through  a  region  always  containing  cases  of 
typhus  fever,  and  largely  infected  with  small- 
pox. Is  it  any  cause  of  surprise  that  cases  of 
these  diseases  are  here  contracted,  to  be  carried 
to  distant  sections  of  the  country,  there  to  de- 
velop themselves,  to  the  surprise  and  alarm  of 
whole  neighborhoods  ?  It  is  also  well  to  remem- 
ber that  several  large  livery  stables  are  located 
in  the  immediate  neighborhood,  whose  vehicles, 
it  is  well-known,  are  frequently  employed  to 
carry  persons,  suffering  from  these  diseases,  to 
hospitals,  or  to  attend  at  funerals.  These  ve- 
hicles are,  perhaps,  immediately  afterward 
driven  to  the  various  car  and  steamboat  lines 
to  secure  passengers,  who  are  thus  exposed  in 
the  most  dangerous  manner  to  these  diseases." 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  HB 


SECOND  only  to  smallpox  as  a  preventable 
disease,  but  of  a  more  fatal  character,  is 
typhus  fever.  Typhus  is  greatly  aggra- 
vated by  domestic  filth,  and  by  overcrowd- 
ing, with  deficient  ventilation.  The  inspectors 
found  and  located  by  street  and  num- 
Typhus  ber  no  less  than  2,000  cases  of  this 
Fever  most  contagious  and  fatal  disease. 
Commencing  in  a  large  tenant-house 
in  Mulberry  Street,  it  was  traced  from  locality 
to  locality,  in  the  poorer  quarters,  until  it  was 
found  to  have  visited  nearly  every  section  of 
the  city.  It  became  localized  in  many  tenant- 
houses  and  streets,  where  it  still  remains,  caus- 
ing a  large  amount  of  sickness  and  mortality. 

At  Mulberry  Street,  in  a  notoriously  filthy 
house,  it  has  existed  for  more  than  four  years. 
This  house  has  a  population  of  about  320,  which 
is  renewed  every  few  months.  During  the  period 
alluded  to,  there  have  been  no  less  than  60 
deaths  by  fever  in  this  single  house,  and  240 
cases.  To-day  this  fever  is  raging  uncontrolled 
in  that  house,  creating  more  orphans  than 
many  well-fought  battles.  Every  new  family 
which  enters  these  infected  quarters  is  sure  to 
fall  a  victim  to  this  pestilential  disease. 

The  tenant-house  No.  —  East  Seventeenth 
Street,  which  reaks  with  filth,  gives  the  same 
history;  upward  of  85  cases,  with  a  large  per- 
centage of  deaths,  occurred  in  this  single  house 
during  the  past  season.     And  still  it  remained 


114 


THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


unclean  and  open  to  new  tenants.  I  could  men- 
tion scores  of  these  houses  in  every  part  of  the 
tenant-house  district  where  typhus  has  ap- 
parently taken 
up  its  abode,  and 
from  whence  it 
sends  out  in  ev- 
ery direction  its 
deadly  streams. 

Not  only  have 
single  houses  be- 
come centres  of 
contagion,  but 
this  fever  has,  in 
many  instances, 
b  e  CO  m  e  local- 
ized in  crowded 
streets,  which  to- 
day are  almost 
I  impassable  on 
account  of  the 
heaps  of  gar- 
bage, and  the 
courts  and  alleys 
of     which     are 

PLAN    OF    FEVER-NEST,   EAST   ITTH     rCCking         with 

STREET,  1865  filth,    making 

Here  85  Cases  of  Typhus  Occurred  in      t^gj^l    great    Cen- 
tres     of      pesti- 
lence.    From  many  of  these  tenements  whole 
families  have  been  swept  away. 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN 


115 


Jersey  Street,  a  short  but  uncleaned  avenue, 
adjacent  to  a  fashionable  part  of  Broadway,  is 
another  great  depot  of  fever,  which,  according 
to  these  records,  frequently  contained  upward 


BIRD'S-EYE  VIEW   OF   FEVER-NEST,   1865,   NOT   FAR 
FROM  BROADWAY  AND  FIFTH  AVENUE 

of  thirty  cases  in  progress  at  one  time.  East 
Eleventh  Street,  between  First  and  Second 
Avenues,  now,  as  all  the  past  summer,  in  a  hor- 


116  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


ribly  filthy  condition,  is  a  local  habitation  of  fe- 
ver of  the  worst  type.  The  same  statement  may 
be  made  of  nearly  every  district  where  the 
tenant-houses  are  especially  crowded,  and  the 
streets,  courts,  and  alleys  are  unusuall}^  filthy. 

INTESTINAL  diseases,  as  cholera  infantum, 
*    diarrhoea,    dysentery,    typhoid    fever,    etc., 

which  arise  from,  or  are  intensely  aggra- 
vated by  the  emanations  from  putrescible  ma- 
terial in  streets,  courts,  and  alleys,  or  from  cess- 
pools, privies,  drain  pipes,  sewers. 
Intestinal  etc.,  were  prevalent  in  the  tenant- 
Affections  house  districts,  creating,  as  usual, 
a  vast  amount  of  sickness,  and  a 
large  infant  mortality.  Very  generally  these 
diseases  were  directly  traceable  to  the  decom- 
posing filth,  and  in  some  instances  were  stopped 
by  the  removal  of  the  nuisance. 

The  Inspector  of  the  Eighth  Ward  reports: 
"Cholera  infantum  has  probably  consigned 
many  more  to  the  grave  during  the  past  sum- 
mer than  all  other  diseases  in  my  inspection 
district.  In  every  case  examined  I  have  found 
it  associated  with  some  well-marked  course  of 
insalubrity;  vegetable  and  animal  decomposi- 
tion have  been  the  most  prominent  causes.  That 
fifty  per  cent  die  from  preventable  causes  in 
my  inspection  district  I  do  not  doubt." 

The  Inspector  of  the  Sixth  Ward  says:  "The 
mortality    among    children    is    fearfully    high, 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN 


117 


many  families  having  lost  all  their  children; 
others  four  out  of  five  or  six." 

THE  Inspector  of  the  Ninth  Ward  says  he 
found    among   the   people   living   near   the 
mouth  of  an  open  sewer :   "That  no  less  than 
twenty-nine  cases  of  dysentery  and  diarrhoea. 


PLAN   OF  MONROE   STREET   FEVER-NEST,   1865 

five  of  which  had  terminated  fatally,  had  oc- 
curred during  the  three  weeks 
Living  at  a        immediately  preceding  his  in- 
Sewefs  Mouth      spection."      He   adds:     "Now, 

when  we  take  into  considera- 
tion the  fact  that  there  are   only  twenty-two 


118  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

dwellings  on  this  square  (a  considerable  por- 
tion of  it  being  occupied  by  a  large  lumber- 
yard), and  that  all  these  cases  had  occurred 
within  a  period  of  about  twenty-one  days,  the 
ratio  becomes  appalling.  How  many  cases 
may  have  occurred  subsequently,  I  have  not 
sought  to  ascertain,  my  time  being  fully  occu- 
pied in  the  inspection  of  the  other  parts  of  my 
district.  But  a  still  more  direct  and  specific  ac- 
tion of  the  poisonous  emanations  proceeding 
from  this  obstructed  sewerage,  manifested  itself 
in  the  dwelling  on  the  corner  of  West  and 
Gansevoort  streets,  which  is  in  the  closest 
proximity  to  the  outlet  of  the  sewer.  Here  I 
learned,  upon  inquiry,  that  typhoid  fever  had 
prevailed  almost  continuously  during  the  pre- 
ceding winter,  and  I  found  three  severe  cases  of 
dysentery  at  the  time  of  my  visit." 

But  I  will  not  occupy  time  with  further  de- 
tails of  the  evidence  which  this  inspection  fur- 
nishes of  the  vast  accumulation  of  the  causes  of 
unhealthiness  which  exist  in  New  York,  and  of 
the  wide  prevalence  of  contagious  diseases 
arising  therefrom  or  aggravated  thereby. 

The  next  point  of  inquiry  is  as  to  the  effect 
of  these  conditions  upon  the  public  health  of 
the  city.  Our  constituted  health  authorities 
claim  that  notwithstanding  this  excessive  con- 
centration of  the  causes  of  disease  around  and 
in  the  homes  of  half  of  our  population,  the 
death-rate  of  New  York  is  very  low.     To  prop- 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  119 


erly  understand  this  statement,  we  must  inquire 
what  is  the  rate  of  death  from  inevitable  causes. 

IT  has  been  estimated  by  careful  writers  on 
vital  statistics  that  17  in  1,000  living  persons 
annually  die  from  inevitable  causes.     That  is, 
in  a  community  of  1,000  persons  living  under 
circumstances  such  that  persons  die  only  from 
old  age,  cancer,  casualties,  etc.. 
The  Normal      17    will    die    annually,    and    no 
Death-Rate      more.      And  this  number  is  the 
maximum  that  will  die  without 
the  occurrence  of  some  disease  due  to  a  remov- 
able cause.      Taking  this  standard  as  the  ab- 
solute necessary  death-rate,  we  can  readily  es- 
timate the  number  of  unnecessary  or  prevent- 
able deaths  which  occur  in  any  community. 

Says  the  Registrar-General  of  England 
(Twentieth  Annual  Report) :  "Any  deaths  in  a 
people  exceeding  17  in  1,000  annually  are  un- 
natural deaths.  If  the  people  were  shot, 
drowned,  burnt,  poisoned  by  strychnine,  their 
deaths  would  not  be  more  unnatural  than  the 
deaths  wrought  clandestinely  by  diseases  in  ex- 
cess of  the  quota  of  natural  death  —  that  is,  in 
excess  of  seventeen  in  1,000  living." 

TAKING  this  as  the  standard,  let  us  see  how 
the  death-rate  of  New  York  compares  with 
it.    It  is  claimed  by  the  city  officials  that  not- 
withstanding the  vast  accumulation  of  the  uni- 


120  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

versally-recognized  causes  of  disease,  New  York 
has  a  low  death-rate.     It  is  not 
Death-Rate  of     reasonable      to      suppose      this 
New  York         statement  true,  nor  is  it  true,  as 
will    presently    appear.      It    is 
stated  very  truly  in  the  City  Inspector's  Report 
for  1863,  that  "it  is  only  by  taking  a  connected 
view  of  a  period  of  years  that  a  correct  judg- 
ment can  be  formed  of  the  state  of  health  of  a 
city,"  and  upon  this  basis  let  us  determine  what 
is  the  mortality  of  New  York. 

Take  the  11  years  preceding  the  last  census, 
viz.,  1860,  excluding,  however,  1854,  the  year  of 
the  cholera.  I  select  this  period  because  it  in- 
cludes the  three  last  census  returns,  and  it  is 
only  where  we  have  the  census  returns  with  the 
mortality  records  that  we  have  accurate  data  for 
our  estimates.  Now,  the  City  Inspector's  own 
records  (reports  of  1863,  page  192)  show  that 
during  the  period  referred  to,  the  death-rate  of 
New  York  City  was  never  below  28  in  the  1,000, 
and  twice  exceeded  40  in  the  1,000,  the  average 
being  as  high  as  33  in  the  1,000.  These  deduc- 
tions are  made  directly  from  the  City  Inspector's 
Reports,  and,  as  they  are  claimed  to  be  infal- 
lible, these  conclusions  cannot  be  controverted. 

Now,  when  you  remember  that  the  highest 
death-rate  fixed  by  sanitary  writers  for  in- 
evitable deaths  is  17  in  1,000,  and  that  all  deaths 
above  that  standard  are  considered  preventable, 
it  is  apparent  what  a  fearful  sacrifice  of  life 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  121 


there  is  in  New  York.  Estimated  at  the  very 
mininiuni  death-rate  of  the  last  decennial  pe- 
riod, viz.:  28  in  1,000,  New  York  annually  lost 
11  from  preventable  deaths  in  1,000  of  her  popu- 
lation, or  upwords  of  7,000  yearly,  on  an  aver- 
age, giving  the  enormous  sum  total  for  this 
period  of  77,000  preventable  deaths. 

It  may  be  urged  that  cities  never  can  attain 
to  this  standard  of  healthfulness,  but  English 
writers  maintain  that  the  rate  of  17  in  the  1,000 
is  the  true  measure  of  the  public  health,  and 
that  even  the  most  populous  towns  may  yet  be 
brought  up  to  it.  Nor  can  we  doubt  that  there 
is  much  plausibility  in  the  assertion,  when  v/e 
find  the  mortality  in  Philadelphia  fall  to  18  in 
1,000 ,  and  that  of  London  gradually  descend 
from  30  in  1,000  to  22  in  1,000, 

IT  is  maintained,  also,  that  New  York  has  a 
lower   death-rate   than  London   or  Philadel- 
phia.     Let  us  see  how  far  this  assertion  is 
sustained  by  the  records  of  the  health  author- 
ities of  those  cities.    During  the  decennial  period 

preceding,  but  includ- 

New  York,  London,  and    ing  1860,  and  exclud- 

Liverpool  Compared      ing    1854,    as    in    the 

former  comparison, 
the  minimum  mortality  in  London  was  20  in 
1,000,  the  maximum  24  in  1,000,  the  mean 
about  22  in  1,000.  These  figures  are  from  the 
Registrar-General  Reports. 


122  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

MHi^HaaHaHiBaiBBaaiBaHaaaBaann^BiBHBBHBBmiBiBBaaBBaB^EiBBnBMHaaa^i^aBaiMH^BBaBHiaaBnnaa 

The  rate  of  mortality  of  Philadelphia  for  the 
same  period  was  as  follows:  Minimum  18  in 
1,000,  maximum  23  in  1,000,  mean  about  20  in 
1,000.  These  figures  are  from  the  report  of  Dr. 
Jewell,  long  the  able  Health  Officer  of  that  city. 
Placed  in  their  proper  relation,  these  mortality 
statistics  read  as  follows :  The  number  of  deaths 
to  the  1,000  living  for  the  ten  years,  1850 — 60 
inclusive,  but  exclusive  of  1854,  is  for 

Min.  Max.  Av. 

London  20  24  22 

Philadelphia    18  23  20 

New  York 28  41  33 

If,  then.  New  York  had  as  low  an  average 
death-rate  as  Philadelphia,  she  would  have 
saved  13  in  1,000  of  her  population  during  that 
period,  or  in  1860,  10,577.  These  figures  may 
seem  excessive,  but  they  are  careful  deductions 
from  the  annual  returns  of  the  several  cities. 
And  yet  it  is  reiterated  year  after  year  by  the 
City  Inspector,  that  "New  York  City,  at  this  day, 
can  lay  claim  to  the  privilege  of  being  num- 
bered with  the  most  healthy  in  the  world." 

With  what  consummate  justice  did  Dr.  Jewell 
administer  this  withering  rebuke  to  our  preten- 
tious official.  "It  is  unnecessary,"  he  says,  in 
his  report  of  1860,  "to  comment  upon  this  ex- 
traordinary statement,  when  the  above  figures 
contradict  so  positively  the  assertion.  It  is  to  be 
regretted  that  the  inspector  had  not  availed  him- 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  123 


self  of  the  above  statistical  information,  which 
would  have  obliged  him  to  have  presented  a 
widely  different  statement,  although  one  in- 
dicating a  more  severe  pressure  of  sanitary 
evils,  upon  the  health  of  their  population,  than 
his  report  develops." 

D  UT  excessive  as  is  this  death-rate,  it  is  not 
*--'  the  full  measure  of  the  penalty  which  we 
pay  to  the  demon  of  filth.  A  high  death- 
rate  from  the  diseases  which  it  engenders  or  in- 
tensifies, always  implies  a  large  amount  of  sick- 
ness. It  is  estimated  by  competent 
Constant  authority  that  there  are  28  cases  of 
Sickness  sickness  for  every  death.  On  this 
basis  of  estimate  what  an  enormous 
amount  of  unnecessary  sickness  exists  in  our 
midst!  Nor  is  this  a  mere  supposition.  I  have 
an  accurate  census  of  many  groups  of  families 
of  that  portion  of  our  population  who  live  im- 
mured in  filth,  and  here  we  find  the  constant 
sickness-rate  excessive.  It  is  no  uncommon 
thing  to  find  it  50,  60,  and  70  per  cent. 

1  WISH  now  to  call  your  attention  to  the  fact 
*  that  great  as  is  our  mortality  and  sickness 
rate,  its  excess  is  not  equally  distributed  over 
the  entire  population,  but  falls  exclusively  upon 
the  poor  and  helpless.  One-half,  at  least,  of 
the  population  of  New  York  have  a  death-rate 
no  higher  than  the  people  of  a  healthy  country 


124  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

town,  while  the  death  pressure  upon  the  other 

half  is  frightfully 
Where  the  Death  Pressure        severe.      For  ex- 
Is  Greatest  ample,  the  Seven- 

teenth Ward, 
which  is  inhabited  principally  by  the  wealthy 
class  and  has  but  few  tenant-houses,  has  a  death- 
rate  of  but  17  in  1,000,  or  only  the  death-rate 
from  inevitable  causes;  but  the  Sixth  and 
Fourth  Wards,  which  are  occupied  by  the  la- 
boring classes,  have  a  death-rate  varying  from 
36  to  40  in  1,000. 

Thus  it  appears  that  v/hile  the  average  death- 
rate  of  the  city  is  very  high,  it  is  principally 
sustained  by  those  Wards  where  the  tenant- 
house  population  is  the  most  numerous.  We 
find  this  excess  of  mortality  just  v/here  we  found 
the  causes  of  diseases  existing  most  numerously. 
And  when  we  sift  the  matter  further,  w^e  find 
that  the  excess  of  mortality  is  not  even  equally 
distributed  over  these  populous  poor  Wards,  but 
is  concentrated  upon  individual  tenant-houses. 
For  example,  while  the  mortality  of  the  Sixth 
Ward  is  nearly  40  in  1,000,  the  mortality  of  its 
large  tenant-houses  is  as  high  as  60  to  70  in 
1,000.  The  following  is  a  recent  census  of  a 
large  but  not  exceptional  tenant-house  of  that 
Ward:  Number  of  families  in  the  house,  74; 
persons,  349;  deaths,  18,  or  53  in  1,000;  constant 
sickness^  1  in  3;  deaths  of  children,  1  in  6,  or  at 
the  rate  of  16  in  1. 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  125 


The  following  table  illustrates  the  distribution 
of  the  mortality  of  New  York  among  the  dif- 
ferent classes  of  inhabitants  at  the  last  census: 
Average   mortality   of   entire 

city 28  in  1,000 

Mortality  of  better  class 10  to  17  " 

Mortality  of  tenant-house 50  "    60  " 

OUT  I  should  not  do  justice  to  this  branch  of 
'-^  inquiry  without  noticing  the  alleged  causes 
of  the  high  mortality  of  New  York.  The 
first  is  the  large  foreign  immigration.  The  re- 
liance to  be  placed  upon  that  scapegoat  may  be 

readily  shown.  Em- 
Some  Scapegoats—^  igration  occurs  to  this 
Foreign  Immigration  country  under  two  con- 
ditions: 1.  The  emigrant 
is  driven  from  home  by  famine,  in  which  case 
the  poorer  class  emigrate,  or,  2,  he  is  allured  by 
advantages  for  labor  or  business,  when  the 
middle  classes  principally  emigrate. 

Now,  it  is  under  the  latter  circumstancees 
that  emigration  generally  takes  place  to  the 
United  States.  This  is  seen  in  the  vast  sums  of 
money  which  the  emigrants  now  annually  bring, 
and  the  amounts  which  they  return  to  their 
friends  as  the  result  of  their  labor.  This  class 
is  always  very  hardy  and  healthy,  as  is  proved 
by  the  small  mortality  that  occurs  in  transitu 
being  but  4.31  per  cent  for  ten  years.  Besides, 
we  have  the  official  statements  of  the  Gommis- 


126 


THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


sioners  of  Emigration  that  but  3  per  cent  remain 
in  the  city. 

But  the  City  Inspector  himself  shows  the  utter 
fallacy  of  this  alleged  cause  of  excessive  mor- 
tality in  his  report  for  1860,  in  which  he  makes 
the  true  explanation,  and  attributes  to  its  proper 


A   SIXTH  WARD   FEVER-NEST   WITH   DEATH-RATE 
OF  53  IN  1,000 

cause  whatever  increased  mortality  arises  from 
emigrants.     He  says: 

"Most  of  the  children  who  arrive  in  this  city 
from  foreign  ports,  although  suffering  from  the 
effects  of  a  protracted  voyage,  bad  accommoda- 
tions, and  worse  fare,  do  not  bring  with  them 
any  marked  disease  beyond  those  which,  with 
proper  care,  nursing,  and  wholesome  air,  could 
not  be  easily  overcome.  The  causes  of  this  ex- 
cessive mortality  must  be  searched  for  in  this 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  127 


city,  and  are  readily  traceable  to  the  wretched 
habitations  in  which  parents  and  children  are 
forced  to  take  up  their  abode;  in  the  contracted 
alleys,  the  tenement  house,  with  its  hundreds  of 
occupants,  where  each  cooks,  eats,  and  sleeps  in 
a  single  room,  without  light  or  ventilation,  sur- 
rounded with  filth,  an  atmosphere  foul,  fetid, 
and  deadly,  with  none  to  console  with  or  advise 
them,  or  to  apply  to  for  relief  when  disease 
invades  them." 

AGAIN,  it  is  alleged  that  the  floating  popula- 
,  tion  causes  the  excess  of  deaths.      But  it 
has  been  established  by  Dr.  Playfair  that 
the   floating   population   is    the    most   healthy. 
The  same  is  true  of  wandering  tribes,  of  a  mov- 
ing   army,    and    equally    of    in- 
The  Floating  dividuals.       But   when    they   fix 
Population     their     habitations     or     encamp, 
that  moment  the  causes  of  dis- 
ease begin  to  gather  about  them,  and  unless  san- 
itary regulations   are   carefully   observed,   dis- 
eases, such  as  fever,  diarrhoeal  affections,  etc., 
begin  to  prevail. 

The  poor  population  of  New  York  is  to-day 
but  an  immense  army  in  camp,  upon  small 
territory,  crowded  into  old  filthy  dwellings,  and 
without  the  slightest  police  regulation  for  clean- 
liness. If  this  army  should  abandon  its  camp 
and  begin  a  roving  life  in  the  country,  all  the 
diseases  now  prevalent  would  disappear.     And 


128  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


it  must  be  added,  that  if  these  deserted  and  un- 
cleaned  tenements  should  immediately  be  filled 
by  healthy  people  from  the  country,  the  new 
tenants  would  at  once  begin  to  suffer  from  all 
the  pestilential  diseases  now  indigenous  to  that 
part  of  the  city. 

I  have  now  laid  before  you,  as  briefly  as  pos- 
sible, the  accumulated  evidence  that  New  York 
is  to-day  full  to  repletion  with  all  the  causes 
which  originate  and  intensify  the  most  loath- 
some and  fatal  diseases  known  to  mankind. 

This  evidence  proves  that  at  least  half  a  mil- 
lion of  its  population  are  literally  submerged 
in  filth,  and  half-stifled  in  an  atmosphere 
charged  with  all  the  elements  of  death.  I  have 
demonstrated  that  the  legitimate  fruits  of  her 
sanitary  evils  is  an  excessively  high  death-rate 
and  a  correspondingly  large  sickness  rate. 

THE  all-important  question  which  now  con- 
cerns us  as  citizens,  and  you  as  practical 
legislators,  is,  can  these  evils  be  remedied? 
We     answer,    yes.       In     the    first     place     the 
streets     can    be    kept    clean.        Other     cities 

accomplish       this 
Can  the  Causes  of  Disease     object,    and    there- 
Be  Removed?  fore  New  York  can, 

and  we  have  strik- 
ing illustrative  examples.  In  certain  portions 
of  the  city  the  streets  are  as  clean  as  this 
floor.     They  are  swept  daily,  and  scarcely  a 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  129 

particle  of  dust  is  left  in  the  streets  or  gutters 
the  year  round.  But  they  are  cleaned  by  private 
contract  of  the  people  residing  upon  them. 
What  individual  enterprise  can  do  for  whole 
squares,  surely  a  corporation  so  lavish  in 
money  as  New  York  ought  to  be  able  to  do  for 
the  city  at  large. 

The  courts,  alleys,  cesspools,  and  privies  can 
be  cleansed  and  kept  in  good  condition.  There 
are  tenant-houses  which  are  as  clean  in  all  their 
alleys,  courts,  and  cellars  as  the  best-kept  pri- 
vate houses.  These  are  dwellings  for  the  poor 
in  which  the  landlord  takes  especial  interest. 
What  is  done  for  the  surroundings  of  one  of 
these  houses,  may  be  done  for  all.  But  the 
tenant-houses  of  the  worst  class  may  be  quickly 
placed  in  a  good  sanitary  condition. 

THE  inspectors  furnish  many  examples  of  this 
fact.      They  were   frequently   mistaken   in 
their  inspection  for  an  official,  and  when 
their  visit  to  the  tenant-houses  was  reported  to 
the  landlord,  he  hastened  to  renovate  the  build- 
ing.    Some  of  the  most 
Improvements  During      ^^t^y  quarters  were  so 
the  Inspection  completely         changed 

within  forty-eight 
hours  that  the  inspectors  could  scarcely  recog- 
nize the  locality.     The  Inspector  of  the  Eighth 
Ward  says: 
"The  sanitary  improvement  in   my   district 


130 


THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


v/wy/^^yy^^^^^^^^^^ 


during  the  progress  of  my  inspection  was 
plainly  visible.  Exceedingly  filthy  places,  over- 
flowing cesspools,  and  privies,  which  were 
numerous  in  my  first  visit,  were  suddenly 
cleaned.  Often  upon  my  second  visit,  with  pa- 
per and  pencil 
in  my  hand  to 
sketch  the  filthy 
scene,  I  would 
find  the  quarters 
cleaned  and 
whitewashed, 
and  the  air,  in- 
stead of  being 
laden  with  dis- 
agreeable odors, 
would  be  com- 
paratively pure 
and  wholesome. 
Many  of  these 
sudden  transi- 
tions were  from 
fear  of  the  pre- 
sumption that 
m  y  inspection 
had  some  official 
authority;  but 
the  greater  part  were  brought  about  by  explain- 
ing to  the  people  the  necessity  of  cleanliness. 

"Pools  of  filthy  water  from  obstructions  at  the 
street  corners,  and  accumulated  along  the  gut- 


PLAN   OF   A   TYPICAL   FEVER-NEST, 

1865 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  131 


ters,  would  quickly  disappear,  when  the  people 
would  be  convinced  of  the  deleterious  effect 
upon  the  public  health.  It  will  be  well  for  the 
inhabitants  of  New  York  City,  and  especially 
for  those  of  this  section,  when  there  shall  be 
laws  not  only  to  compel  them  to  keep  their 
houses  and  surroundings  clean  and  free  from 
the  effluvia  resulting  from  vegetable  and  animal 
decomposition,  but  to  prevent  the  overcrowd- 
ing of  tenant-houses,  where  fatal  diseases  are 
generated,  and  where  death  walks  around." 

THE  tenant-house  population  is  susceptible  of 
infinite   improvement,   when   once   rescued 
from  the  reign  of  filth,  and  restored  to  a 
pure  atmosphere  and  clean  homes.     The  poor 
live  in  these  wretched  tenements  because  they 

are   compelled   to,    and   not 
How  to  Improve     from     choice.        They     uni- 
the  People  versally  complain  that  they 

cannot  escape  from  domes- 
tic and  street  filth.  It  surrounds  and  pervades 
their  habitations,  always  accumulating,  and 
never  diminishing.  The  most  tidy  house-wife, 
compelled  to  live  in  the  midst  of  this  ocean  of 
rubbish,  with  all  its  degrading  associations,  soon 
finds  the  same  level,  and  from  this  she  can  be 
rescued  only  by  giving  her  again  a  clean  and 
well-ordered  home.  And  such  a  home  every 
municipal  government  is  bound  to  secure  to  the 
poorest  and  humblest  citizen. 


132  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


Let  the  landlord  be  compelled  to  keep  his 
house  in  good  repair,  supply  it  with  an  abun- 
dance of  pure  water,  connect  the  privy  with  the 
sewer,  open  free  ventilation,  afford  means  for 
removal  of  garbage,  and  then  keep  a  careful 
oversight  of  his  tenants,  enforcing  cleanliness. 
If  this  were  done,  the  tenant-house  people 
would  immediately  improve,  and  the  death-rate, 
if  we  may  judge  from  other  cities,  would  fall 
one-fourth. 

Again,  the  cellar  population  can  be  removed 
from  their  subterranean  abodes,  and  placed  in 
better  homes.  Liverpool  has  solved  this  prob- 
lem for  us. 

In  1847  that  city  had  a  cellar  population 
of  20,000;  an  ordinance  was  passed  for- 
bidding the  occupation  of  underground  rooms 
as  residences,  with  certain  restrictions,  and 
within  three  years  the  great  mass  of  people  in 
these  subterranean  haunts  were  removed  to 
better  tenements,  with  a  great  reduction  of  the 
mortality  of  the  city. 

That  city,  formerly  the  most  unhealthy  in 
England,  has  continued  the  reforms  thus  in- 
augurated by  compelling  landlords  to  improve 
their  tenant-houses,  and  the  result  is  that  it  has 
become  one  of  the  healthiest  towns  of  Europe. 
London  has  recently  taken  similar  action  in  re- 
gard to  cellar  tenements.  What  these  cities 
have  done.  New  York  can  and  ought  to  do  for 
her  public  health. 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  133 


VtflAT  the  diseases  which  prevail  with  such 

'  '  fatality  in  the  uncleaned  tenant-houses  are 

for  the  most  part  preventable,  we  have  the 

most  undoubted   evidence.      That  smallpox  is 

preventable  is  known  to  every  school-boy,  and 

yet  that  loathsome  disease  to- 
A  Town  That  day  prevails  throughout  all  the 
Was    Immune      tenant-house  districts  of  New 

York,  without  the  slightest  re- 
straint on  the  part  of  our  local  authorities.  Ty- 
phus is  to-day  ravaging  the  homes  of  the  poor 
without  "let  or  hindrance,"  and  yet  cleanliness 
and  pure  air  are  sure  preventives.  Of  this  truth 
these  reports  furnish  many  examples. 

The  fever-nest  —  West  Thirty-third  Street  — 
is  one  oT  a  row  of  tenant-houses  five  stories  high, 
and  contains  16  families.  It  was  in  a  filthy  con- 
dition, without  Croton  water,  waste-pipes 
stopped,  sinks  overflowing  and  emitting  offen- 
sive odors;  fever  had  prevailed  all  winter, 
nearly  every  person  in  the  house  having  had 
an  attack,  four  having  died.  It  was  never  in- 
spected by  a  city  official.  The  owner  was  in- 
duced to  clean  the  house,  and  from  that  date 
not  a  case  of  fever  has  occurred.  The  inspector 
who  reports  this  case  very  justly  adds:  "If, 
when  the  first  case  of  fever  occurred  in  this 
building,  the  owner  had  been  compelled  to  put 
it  in  a  good  sanitary  condition,  six  human  lives 
would  undoubtedly  have  been  saved,  besides  a 
great  amount  of  sickness." 


134 


THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


Cholera  infantum  and  diarrhoeal  affections 
are  found  in  their  greatest  intensity  where 
putreseible   animal  matter   and   domestic  filth 


I?- 
I 


CtM^Yas^ 


Tenaat-Homes  on  -—!—  Aveivue,. 
PLAN  OF  A  REAR  CUL-DE-SAC  FEVER-NEST,  1865 

exist.  Remove  these  causes,  or  remove  the  pa- 
tients from  the  neighborhood,  and  these  dis- 
eases generally  disappear  at  once.  Diphtheria 
is  found  to  be  most  intense  in  the  vicinity  of 
unclean  stables.       It  is,  therefore,  with  great 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  135 

propriety,  that  the  entire  class  of  zymotic  dis- 
eases are  now  called  "filth  and  foul  air"  dis- 
eases by  the  English  sanitary  writers.  Remove 
the  filth  and  foul  air,  and  these  diseases  disap- 
pear as  effect  follows  cause. 

BUT  while  it  is  admitted  that  the  streets  of  a 
'town  may  be  cleaned,  the  condition  of  the 

poor  improved,  and  diseases,  under  the 
most  favorable  circumstances,  prevented,  it  may 
be  doubted  whether  the  sanitary  condition  of 

populous  towns  can  be 
Can  Populous  Towns     materially  changed,  and 

Be  Improved?  the     death-rate     greatly 

reduced.  Yet  in  Eng- 
land, where  sanitary  science  is  enthusiastically 
cultivated,  there  is  not  only  no  doubt  that  large 
towns  can  be  thus  improved,  but  that  the  mor- 
tality of  London  itself  may  be  no  greater  than 
that  of  the  country. 

Already,  indeed,  the  London  Times  boasts 
"that  the  average  of  health  throughout  the  City 
of  London  is  higher  than  the  average  of  health 
throughout  all  England,  taking  town  and  coun- 
try together.  The  mortality  in  all  England  is 
at  the  rate  of  22.8  in  every  1,000  of  the  popula- 
tion; in  the  City  of  London  it  is  at  the  rate  of 
22.3  for  every  1,000  inhabitants!  The  improve- 
ment has  been  progressive;  it  has  been  slow, 
but  steady  and  sure.  Gradually  the  mortality 
has   decreased,   until  the  yearly  death  roll   of 


136 


THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


3,763  has  been  reduced  to  2,904  within  a  period 
of  nine  years,  during  which  the  city  has  been 
under  the  rule  of  the  Sanitary  Commission. 
The  deaths  this  year  —  22.3  per  1,000,  or  one  in 
every  forty-five  of  the  inhabitants  —  are  nine 
per  cent  below  the  general  average,  and  repre- 
sent a  saving  of  286  lives.  And  secondly,  this 
gratifying  result  has  been  obtained  in  the  face 
of  obstacles  which  seemed  to  be  almost  insur- 
mountable." 

Liverpool  affords  a  striking  example  of  the 
power  of  sanitary  measures,  rigidly  enforced  to 
improve  the  public  health.  It  was  formerly  the 
most  unhealthy  city  of  England,  being  the  very 
home  of  typhus,  smallpox,  and  allied  prevent- 
able diseases.  But  it  adopted  vigorous  meas- 
ures of  reform,  improving  its  poorer  districts, 
and  the  death-rate  has  fallen  eight  in  1,000. 
Macclesfield,  Salisbury,  and  many  other  Eng- 
lish towns  have  had  their  mortality  reduced  8, 
10,  and  15  in  1,000  by  the  vigorous  prosecution 
of  sanitary  improvements.  All  the  populous 
towns  of  that  country  are  moving  in  this  reform, 
and,  as  a  result,  the  general  death-rate  of  towns 
is  approximating  that  of  the  country. 

T  HE  Health  Officer  of  London  announced  that 

cleanliness  would  preserve  a  town  from  the 

visitations  of  epidemics.    But  there  must  be 

cleanliness    of    the    streets,    cleanliness    of    the 

courts,  cleanliness  of  the  apartments,  and  clean- 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  137 

liness  of  the  person.     On  the  approach  of  the 

cholera    in    1849    the 

Cleanliness  Preserves        town     of     Worcester, 

from  Epidemics  England,     determined 

to  test  the  theory,  and 
set  vigorously  to  work  and  cleaned  the  town 
thoroughly,  removing  everything  of  an  offensive 
nature,  and  adopting  the  most  stringent  regula- 
tions against  the  accumulation  of  filth  about  or 
within  the  homes  of  the  people.  The  result 
was  that  this  "destroyer"  of  unclean  cities 
made  a  Passover  with  the  people  of  Worcester, 
for  on  every  lintel  and  door-post  was  written 
—  Cleanliness,  Cleanliness.  Not  a  house  was 
entered,  and  the  town  was  saved  in  the  midst 
of  the  most  frightful  desolation. 

New  Orleans  is  another  striking  example  of 
the  value  of  civic  cleanliness.  Since,  by  military 
regulations,  it  is  kept  constantly  in  a  cleanly 
condition,  it  has  had  no  visitation  of  its  old  en- 
emy, yellow  fever. 

The  degree  of  public  health  of  a  town  is 
therefore  measured  by  its  cleanliness,  and  its 
capacity  for  health  depends  upon  its  capacity 
for  cleanliness. 

There  is  scarcely  a  city  which  has  such  ab- 

*    solute  need  of  an  efficient  and  intelligent 

sanitary  government  as  New  York.     On  its 

small  territory  three,  four,  or  five  millions  of 

people  are  yet  to  be  accommodated  with  houses. 


138  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

Already  there  are  crowded  upon  less  than  eight 

of   its    thirty-two 

Importance  of  Sanitary     square  miles  all  of  our 

Government  commercial,  business, 

and  manufacturing 
interests,  and  the  houses  of  nearly  1,000,000  of 
people.  And  in  the  natural  relations  of  the  poor 
and  rich,  the  former  consisting  of  more  than 
half  of  the  entire  population,  are  crowded  into 
less  than  a  fourth  of  this  area.  Of  what  vast 
importance  is  it  that  a  wise  and  intelligent 
authority  be  vigilantly  exercised,  so  that  in  its 
future  growth  and  expansion  every  condition 
pertaining  to  health  shall  be  secured  to  its  inhab- 
itants ! 

It  is  universally  conceded  that  New  York  has 
in  the  highest  degree  all  the  natural  advan- 
tages of  salubrity.  Its  climate  is  the  mean  be- 
tween the  extremes  of  heat  and  cold;  its  topo- 
graphical peculiarities  are  admirably  adapted 
for  drainage  and  sewerage;  its  exposure  is 
southern;  its  shores  are  swept  by  two  rivers, 
which  bear  seaward  everything  that  enters  them 
beyond  the  power  of  the  flowing  tide  to  return 
it;  its  rural  surroundings  are  of  the  most  health- 
ful. In  every  respect  it  is  regarded  by  compe- 
tent observers  as  most  favorably  located  for 
cleanliness,  and  the  highest  degree  of  public 
health.  And  there  can  be  no  doubt,  that  should 
New  York  be  placed  under  a  wise  sanitary  gov- 
ernment, which  would  improve  all  its  natural 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN 


139 


advantages  for  health,  it  would  become  the 
cleanest  and  healthiest  city  in  the  world,  and 
one  of  the  most  delightful  places  of  residence. 

BUT  this  is  not  a  matter  which  concerns  the 
^  citizens  of  New  York  alone.    The  people  of 
the  State  have  a  vital  interest  in  the  public 
health  of  our  city.     Connected  as  it  is  by  means 


FLOOR-PLAN  OF  A  NEW  FEVER-BREEDING  STRUCTURE 
NEAR  BROADWAY  AND  CENTRAL  PARK,  1865 

of  rapid  inter-coinmunication  with  all  parts  of 

the  country,  there  is  every 
The  Entire  Country     facility    offered    for    the 
Concerned  wide     diffusion     of     the 

seeds  of  contagion.  It  is 
estimated  by  accurate  statisticians  that  no  less 
than  250,000  persons  pass  in  and  out  of  New 
York  daily  over  the  ferries  and  railroads.  It 
could  not  fail  to  happen  that  if  any  contagious 
disease  prevailed  in  this  city,  it  would  be 
carried   into   the   country   and   widely   dissem- 


140  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


inated.  And  such  is  now  a  matter  of  daily  oc- 
currence. There  is  no  doubt  that  nearly  all  the 
epidemics  of  smallpox  in  country  towns,  and 
much  of  the  typhus  and  similar  diseases,  have 
their  origin  in  New  York.  I  have  in  my  hand 
letters  from  all  parts  of  the  State  confirming  this 
statement.  They  strikingly  illustrate  the  want 
of  a  good  sanitary  police  in  New  York,  and  the 
power  of  a  great  commercial  centre  to  scatter 
disease  broadcast  over  the  country. 

A  few  of  these  cases  will  abundantly  illustrate 
the  point: 

Dr.  J.  S.  Sprague,  of  Cooperstown,  Otsego 
County,  reports  the  occurrence  of  twenty-six 
cases  of  smallpox  in  that  town,  communicated 
by  one  person  in  October,  1860,  who  took  the 
disease  at  a  hotel  in  our  city,  in  which  a  person 
with  the  disease  had  recently  died.  He  was  a 
merchant,  and  came  to  the  city  on  business. 

Dr.  G.  G.  F.  Gay,  of  Buffalo,  reports  the  case 
of  a  female,  who  arrived  from  New  York  in 
November,  1860,  and  was  removed  from  the 
cars  of  the  Erie  Railroad  to  the  State  Line  Road, 
and  proceeded  westward.  As  was  after- 
ward ascertained,  she  had  smallpox,  and  com- 
municated the  disease  at  Golumbus,  Ohio,  where 
there  were  three  deaths  produced  by  it.  Four 
deaths  were  directly  traceable  to  this  exposure, 
viz. :  three  milkmen  and  one  baggage  man,  all  of 
whom  came  in  contact  with  the  sick  woman. 

W.  T.  Babbitt  mentions  the  case  of  a  young 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  141 

man  who  took  the  disease  in  this  city  at  a  hotel 
where  it  was  prevailing,  at  which  he  stopped 
while  on  a  visit  here,  in  whom  the  disease  ap- 
peared after  his  return  to  Olean,  in  Cattaraugus 
County. 

Dr.  M.  Jarvis,  of  Canestota,  Madison  County, 
relates  the  case  of  a  man  who  visited  this  city 
with  horses  for  sale,  and  was  attacked  with 
symptoms  of  smallpox  some  ten  days  after  his 
return  to  Smithfield,  in  that  county,  who  com- 
municated the  disease  to  his  family,  from  whom 
it  spread  to  others  in  that  and,  also,  in  a  neigh- 
boring town. 

r\R.   C.  M.  NOBLE,   of  Waverley,  Delaware 
*-^    County,  mentions  the  case  of  a  merchant 
of  that  place,  who  came  to  this  city  with 
his  wife,  and  went  to  one  of  our  most  frequented 
hotels.      Being   very   much   fatigued,    they   re- 
tired   to    the   room   provided 
Smallpox  in  a       for    them    without    any    par- 
Hotel  Bedroom       ticular    examination    of    it^ — 

but  found  in  the  morning 
that  they  had  been  put  in  a  room  from  which 
a  patient  with  smallpox  had  just  been  removed, 
without  its  having  been  cleansed.  The  gentle- 
man was  seized  with  a  malignant  form  of  that 
disease  after  his  return  home.  Two  deaths  and 
six  cases  of  smallpox  and  varioloid  resulted 
from  this  case. 
Dr.   S.  W.  Turner,  of  Chester,   Connecticut, 


142  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

gives  also  two  cases,  one  of  smallpox  and  one 
of  varioloid,  in  that  and  a  neighboring  place, 
which  could  be  traced  to  this  city. 

Dr.  Snow,  the  vigilant  Health  Officer  of  Prov- 
idence, R.  I.,  states  that  smallpox  is  rarely 
known  in  that  city,  except  when  imported  from 
New  York. 

I    COULD    repeat   these    details    until    it    was 
shown  that  nearly  every  town  in  the  State, 
and  nearly  every  city  in  the  country,  has  been 
inoculated  by  New  York  with  this  most  loath- 
some   disease.      The   most   striking    and   most 

melancholy  instances  of 

New  York  Inoculates     the    free    dissemination 

the  Nation  of  contagion  are  found 

in  the  army,  where 
whole  regiments  have  been  stricken  with  small- 
pox through  infected  clothing  manufactured  at 
the  homes  of  the  poor,  where  the  disease  was 
prevailing.  But  these  are  facts  too  w^ell  known 
to  every  medical  man,  and  even  to  the  com- 
munity, to  require  further  illustration. 

What  terror  smallpox  creates  in  country  towns 
when  it  attacks  its  first  victim,  you  very  well 
know.  The  house  where  it  occurs  is  quaran- 
tined, and  not  unfrequently  the  sufferer  is  de- 
serted by  his  friends,  and  left  to  recover  or  die, 
as  the  case  may  be.  Business  with  the  country 
is  often  suspended  by  the  placards  posted  upon 
the  highways,  with  the  terrifying  word  "Small- 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  143 


pox"  Upon  them,  and  a  finger  pointing  om- 
inously to  the  town.  In  nine  eases  out  of  ten, 
another  finger  should  point  toward  New  York, 
as  the  source  of  the  pestilence. 

It  has  been  estimated  by  a  competent  ob- 
server, that  every  case  of  smallpox  in  a  country 
town  costs,  by  derangement  of  business  alone, 
more  money  than  is  annually  expended  upon 
its  public  schools.  If  we  add  to  this  pecuniary 
loss  the  feverish  excitement  and  popular  appre- 
hension, and  the  sufferings  and  probable  death 
of  the  victim  from  want  of  proper  care,  we  may 
but  indifferently  estimate  the  cost  to  the  country 
of  the  prevalence  of  this  disease. 

Now,  this  diffusion  of  contagion  from  New 
York,  we  contend,  is  unnecessary.  Every  well- 
informed  medical  man  knows  that  we  may  have 
a  sanitary  police  so  vigilant,  so  efficient  and  so 
powerful,  that  it  will  not  only  preserve  the  pub- 
lic health,  but  prevent  the  spread  of  disease 
therefrom.  We  hold,  therefore,  that  you  are  not 
only  called  upon  to  protect  the  people  of  the 
City  of  New  York  from  contagious  disease,  but 
equally  that  you  are  bound  to  protect  the  peo- 
ple of  the  State  from  dissemination  of  pestilence 
by  every  legislative  safeguard  which  sanitary 
science  can  suggest. 

THE  Sanitary  Committee  of  the  Board  of 
Health,  during  the  prevalence  of  cholera  in 
1849,  remark  in  their  report: 


144  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


"The  labors  of  your  committee,  during  the 
past  appalling  season   of  sickness   and   death, 

and  the  awful  scenes  of 

Inefficiency  of  degradation,  misery,  and 

Health  Organizations      filth  developed  to  them 

by  their  researches, 
have  brought  into  full  viev\^  the  fact  that  we 
have  no  sanitary  police  worthy  of  the  name; 
that  we  are  unprotected  by  that  watchful  regard 
over  the  public  health  which  common  sense  dic- 
tates to  be  necessary  for  the  security  of  our 
lives,  the  maintenance  of  the  city's  reputation, 
and  the  preservation  of  the  interests  of  the  in- 
habitants." 

THIS  is  a  perfectly  truthful  statement  of  the 
present  condition  of  New  York.   Practically, 
it  is  a  city  without  any  sanitary  government. 
In  its  growith  it  is  developing  the  natural  his- 
tory of  a  city  that  utterly  ignores  all  rules  and 

regulations  which  tend  to 

Without  Sanitary        make  the  homes  of  its  peo- 

Government  pie  pleasant  and  healthy. 

It  is  the  only  city  in 
the  civilized  world  which  disregards  the  Pla- 
tonic idea  that  in  a  model  republic  medical  men 
should  be  selected  to  preserve  and  promote  the 
public  health.  Its  board  of  health,  the  mayor 
and  common  council,  is  an  unwieldly  body. 
Its  commisioners  of  health  have  limited  powers, 
and  are  equally  incompetent. 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  145 


,fIWt»«tP-J^— Jt* 


THE  City  Inspector's  department,  which  alone 
has  the  machinery  for  sanitary  inspection 
and  surveillance,  is  a  gigantic  imposture.  Of 
its  forty-four  health  wardens,  whose  duty  it 
should  be  to  make  house-to-house  inspections, 

searching  out  the  cause 

The  City  Inspectofs       of    disease,    and    using 

Department  every  known  agency  for 

the  control  and  suppres- 
sion of  epidemics,  many  are  liquor  dealers,  and 
all  are  grossly  ignorant.  Not  one  has  any 
knowledge  of  medical  subjects,  nor  dare  they 
freely  visit  such  diseases  as  smallpox,  typhus, 
or  cholera. 

During  this  entire  voluntary  inspection,  ex- 
tending over  six  months,  health  wardens  have 
rarely  been  known  to  visit  infected  quarters,  al- 
though smallpox,  fever,  etc.,  etc.,  have  been  prev- 
alent, and  the  city  has  been  in  a  most  disgrace- 
fully iilthy  condition.  A  single  health  warden 
recently  ventured  to  visit  a  house  where  small- 
pox existed  in  an  upper  room;  he  sent  for  the 
attendant,  and  when  she  appeared,  ordering 
her  not  to  approach  him,  he  gave  the  following 
as  the  best  means  of  prevention:  "Burn  cam- 
phor on  the  stove,  and  hang  bags  of  camphor 
about  the  necks  of  the  children." 

To  what  depth  of  humiliation  must  that  com- 
munity have  descended,  which  tolerates  as  its 
sanitary  ofhcers  men  who  are  not  only  utterly 
disqualified  by  education,  business,  and  moral 


146  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

character,  but  who  have  not  even  the  poor 
qualification  of  courage  to  perform  their  duties. 
But  perhaps  the  most  decisive  proof  of  the  utter 
and  hopeless  inefficiency  of  our  multiform 
health  arrangements  is  found  in  the  fact  that  all 
the  evils  from  which  we  now  suffer  have  grown 
up  under  their  care.  A  late  City  Inspector  thus 
emphatically  gave  expression  to  the  popular 
feeling  in  regard  to  existing  organizations: 

"With  such  a  system,  can  there  be  a  wonder 
that  the  sanitary  condition  of  the  city  is  not  im- 
proved? *  *  *  Nor  must  the  consideration  be 
kept  from  view,  that  the  members  of  the  com- 
mon council,  the  board  of  health,  and  commis- 
sioners of  health  are  all,  from  the  manner  of 
their  appointment,  subject  to  partisan  in- 
fluence. To  expect  a  perfect  sanitary  system, 
under  such  a  condition  of  things,  is  to  expect 
an  impossibility." 

THE  medical  officer  of  health  for  the  City  of 
London,  a  gentleman  of  large  experience, 
thus  defines  a  health  organization  capable  of 
answering  the  demands  of  a  large  and  growing 
town:  "The  object  of  this  organization  lies  in 
a  word:   inspection,  inspection  of 
Sanitaru      the  most  constant,  most  searching. 
Inspection     most   intelligent,    and   most   trust- 
worthy kind,  is  that  in  which  the 
provisional  management  of  our  sanitary  affairs 
must  essentially  consist."      The  results  of  this 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  14:7 

work  of  voluntary  sanitary  inspection  which  I 
have  before  me  prove  on  every  page  the  truth  of 
the  above  statement.  No  health  organization  with- 
out daily  inspection  would  have  any  efficiency. 
Of  the  value  of  such  thorough  inspection  in 
the  suppression  of  epidemics,  and  in  the  pre- 
vention of  disease,  there  are  abundant  exam- 
ples. The  people  of  a  populous  town  of  Eng- 
land, becoming  alarmed  at  the  approach  of  chol- 
era in  1849,  organized  a  corps  of  inspectors, 
whose  duty  it  was  to  visit  from  house  to  house, 
and  inquire  for  cases  of  premonitory  diarrhoea, 
and  when  found  to  apply  the  remedy  at  once. 
The  result  was  that  cholera  did  not  visit  that 
town.  The  same  systematic  house-to-house 
visitation  was  adopted  in  some  poor  districts  of 
London  in  1854,  and  there  was  an  almost  com- 
plete exemption  of  those  parts  of  the  city,  while 
some  quarters  of  the  wealthy,  which  were  not 
under  such  surveillance,  suffered  severely. 

BUT  it  is  essential  that  this  inspection  should 
be   by   thoroughly   qualified   medical   men, 
and  it  must  consist  in  a  house-to-house  visi- 
tation.    Disease  must  be  sought  for,  found,  its 
incipient    history    completely    made    out,    the 

causes    upon    which    it    de- 

Itispection  Must     pends  reported,  and  its  rem- 

Be  Thorough        edy  suggested.   Every  case  of 

death  should  be  visited,  and 

all  the  circumstances  attending  the  development 


148 


THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


of  the  disease,  if  it  belong  to  the  preventable 
class,  should  be  rigidly  investigated  and  re- 
ported, in  order  that  the  central  bureau  may 
apply  the  proper  remedy. 

Striking  exam- 
ples of  the  value  of 
medical  sanitary 
inspection  are  fur- 
nished by  this  vol- 
untary organiza- 
tion. One  inspector 
found  diarrhoeal 
affections  very 
prevalent  in  a  set- 
tlement in  an  up- 
town ward,  and  for 
a  long  time  was 
baffled  in  his  ef- 
forts to  discover 
the  cause.  He  was 
finally  led  to  exa- 
mine the  water  of 
a  neighboring  well, 
which  the  people 
used.  This  water 
appeared  to  be  of 
an  excellent  qual- 
ity, but  on  exami- 
nation b  y  Prof. 
Draper,  it  was  found  to  contain  a  large  amount 
of  organic  matter,  derived  either  from  a  sewer 


FEVER-BREEDING   STAGNANT 

WATER,      EIGHTH      AVENUE, 

BETWEEN     75TH     AND     76TH 

STREETS,  1865 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  14:9 

or  privy.  Prof.  Draper  pronounced  it  liquid 
poison.  The  mystery  was  at  once  solved,  and 
the  proper  remedy  suggested. 

In  another  instance  a  very  contagious  disease 
was  found  in  a  tenant-house,  and  after  a  long 
course  of  inquiry  it  was  at  length  discovered 
that  a  washer-woman,  living  in  the  basement, 
had  taken  in  sailors'  clothing.  The  sailors 
were  found,  the  ship  visited  from  which  they 
came,  and  there  the  disease  was  found.  None 
but  medical  men  can  prosecute  such  investiga- 
tions with  success,  or  suggest  the  proper  remedy. 
If  such  a  corps  of  sanitary  inspectors  were 
daily  patrolling  their  districts,  visiting  from 
house  to  house,  searching  out  sanitary  evils,  ad- 
vising and  aiding  the  people  in  the  adoption  of 
preventive  measures,  no  epidemics  of  smallpox, 
typhus,  scarlet  fever,  or  cholera  would  ever  gain 
more  than  a  transient  foothold.  The  sanitary 
inspector  would  truly  become  an  officer  of 
health  and  would  be  everywhere  welcome. 

THE  remedy  for  our  evils  must  be  apparent; 
and  this  remedy  is  suggested  in  such  terse 
unqualified  language  by  the  City  Inspector 
above  quoted,  that  I  call  the  attention  of  the 
committee  especially  to  this  remark. 
The         as  a  proper  guide  in  your  delibera- 
Remedy      tions.    In  the  City  Inspector's  report 
for  1861  we  find  the  following: 
"The    stay    of    pestilence,    to    be    eftectual. 


150  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

must  be  prompt,  and  equally  prompt  must 
be  the  interposition  of  barriers  against  the 
introduction  of  disease,  which  may  be  kept 
back,  but,  once  introduced,  can  with  difficulty 
be  checked  or  extirpated.  For  these  reasons, 
there  should  be  a  power  existing  in  other  hands 
that  may  be  ready  to  be  used  at  the  moment  the 
exigency  may  arise."  *  *  *  "The  remedy,  ap- 
parent to  every  one,  must  consist  in  the  adop- 
tion of  laws  transferring  the  power  of  sanitary 
regulations  to  some  other  authority  of  a  differ- 
ent order  of  instruction  in  sanitary  science." 
*  *  *  "The  first  groundwork  of  reform,  in  the 
opinion  of  the  undersigned,  is  to  bestow  upon 
some  other  body,  differently  constituted,  all 
power  over  the  sanitary  affairs  of  the  city;  and, 
until  this  is  done,  all  other  proposals  of  reform 
will  be  deprived  of  their  essentially  beneficial 
features.  To  escape  present  complications  is 
the  first  great  point  to  be  gained;  and  this  point 
secured,  simplicity,  promptness,  and  efficiency 
may  be  substituted  for  inefficiency,  complica- 
tion, and  delay." 

Accepting  this  as  the  first  step  in  reform,  the 
practical  question  arises:  How  shall  that  body 
be  constituted  to  which  is  to  be  confided  the 
sanitary  interests  of  New  York? 


I 


F  the  experience  of  other  large  cities  is  of  any 
value,  or,  indeed,  if  we  rely  simply  on  com- 
mon sense,  the  following  are  indispensable 


NEW  YORK,  THE  UNCLEAN  151 


prerogatives     in     any     well-organized     health 
board: 

1.  It  should  be  independent 
Ah  Efficient      of    all    political    influence    and 

Health  Board     above  all  partisan  control. 

2.  It  should  combine  execu- 
tive ability  with  a  profound  knowledge  of  dis- 
ease and  the  proper  measures  of  prevention.  To 
this  end  the  board  should  be  composed  in  part 
of  men  especially  accustomed  to  the  dispatch 
of  business,  and  in  part  of  medical  men  of  great 
skill  and  experience. 

3.  It  should  have  a  corps  of  skilled  medical 
officers  as  inspectors,  which  should  be  the  eyes, 
the  ears,  in  a  word,  the  senses  of  the  board,  in 
every  part  of  the  city,  searching  out  disease,  in- 
vestigating the  causes  which  give  rise  to  it,  the 
conditions  under  which  it  exists,  the  means  of 
its  propogation,  and  the  most  effectual  mode  of 
its  suppression. 

4.  It  should  have  a  close  alliance  with  the 
police,  which  must  be  its  arm  of  power  in  the 
prompt  and  efficient  execution  of  its  orders. 


V 

Victory 


HE  effect  of  this  startling  exhibi- 
tion   of    the    horrible    sanitary 
condition    of    New    York,    both 
upon  the  joint  committees  and 
the    large    audience,    was    ev- 
idently   very    profound.       And 
this   effect   was   heightened   by 
the  early  denials  by  the  then  City  Inspector  and 
his  followers  of  the  truth  of  the  description  of 
the  condition  of  special  localities. 
Effect  of  the      ^^^    h^q   immediate    exhibitions 
Hearing  j^y    ^j^^    speaker    of    the    sworn 

statements  of  the  Physician-In- 
spectors of  the  Citizens'  Association,  with  pho- 
tographic illustrations.  Pressed  by  members 
of  the  committee  to  state  when  he  last  had  these 
places  inspected,  he  admitted  that  they  had 
never  been  inspected  by  his  Department. 

Intense  interest  was  manifested  in  the  custom 
of  wholesale  dealers  in  clothing  of  having  their 
goods  manufactured  in  tenement  houses;  in  the 
fact  that  Inspectors  had  often  found  such  cloth- 
ing thrown  over  the  beds  or  cradles  of  children 
suffering  from  contagious  diseases,  as  scarlet 


(155) 


156  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

fever,  measles,  smallpox;  and  in  the  evidence 
that  these  diseases  were  distributed  widely  over 
the  country  by  this  infected  clothing.  Several 
of  the  committee  seemed  much  disturbed,  as  did 
the  audience,  during  a  recital  of  cases,  and  when 
the  hearing  closed,  one  of  the  committee  said 
to  me,  in  an  excited  manner,  "Why,  I  bought 
underwear  at  one  of  those  stores  a  few  days 
ago,  and  I  believe  I  have  got  smallpox,  for  I 
begin  to  itch  all  over!" 

Indeed,  the  effect  of  the  discussion  before  the 
joint  committees  was  so  favorable,  that  several 
members  declared  that  the  bill  would  imme- 
diately pass  both  Houses  without  opposition. 
But  the  City  Inspector  secured  delay  by  request- 
ing another  hearing,  in  order  to  investigate  the 
facts  presented  in  my  quotations  from  the  re- 
port of  our  inspection.  This  delay  gave  him 
the  desired  opportunity  to  defeat  the  bill,  by 
means  at  his  command  and  by  methods  famil- 
iar to  that  class  of  politicians. 

But  the  public,  and  especially  the  medical  pro- 
fession, both  of  the  city  and  the  State,  had  be- 
come so  interested  in  the  measure  that  at  the 
next  election  it  became  a  prominent  issue  and 
led  to  the  defeat  of  seventeen  candidates  for  the 
Legislature  of  1866  who  had  voted  in  opposition. 


I 


T  is  said  that  epidemics  are  the  best  promoters 
of  sanitary  reform,  and  very  opportunely 
cholera  made  its  dread  appearance  in  Europe 


VICTORY  157 

late  in  1865,  and  from  its  rate  of  progress  it 
seemed  likely  to  visit  our  shores  early  next 
year.  These  favoring  conditions  led 
Triumph  to  the  passage  of  the  "Metropolitan 
at  Last  Health  Law"  among  the  first  meas- 
ures of  the  Legislature  in  1866. 

The  struggle  and  final  triumph  of  the  people 
of  New  York,  in  their  efforts  to  secure  adequate 
health  protection,  were  national  in  their  in- 
fluence. And  this  influence  was  emphasized 
by  the  first  acts  of  the  Metropolitan  Board. 
Scarcely  had  it  organized  when  cholera  made 
its  appearance  in  New  York.  There  was  the 
usual  alarm  among  the  people,  and  large  num- 
bers left  the  city.  But  the  new  health  laws  and 
ordinances,  administered  by  an  intelligent, 
scientific  authority,  demonstrated  the  raison 
d'etre  of  their  existence. 

The  first  case  of  cholera  was  promptly 
isolated,  the  house  and  its  surroundings 
cleansed  and  disinfected,  and  rigid  supervision 
established.  The  second  case,  which  appeared 
in  another  part  of  the  city,  was  treated  in  a 
similar  manner  and  with  the  same  results.  A 
third,  fourth,  fifth,  and  finally  many  cases  ap- 
peared in  different  parts  of  the  city  during  the 
season,  apparently  brought  from  localities  in 
the  vicinity  where  the  epidemic  prevailed  with 
its  usual  severity;  but  in  New  York  no  two  cases 
occurred  in  the  same  place,  so  effectually  was 
each  case  treated. 


158  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

Within  one  month  public  confidence  in  the 
power  of  the  board  to  control  the  spread  of  the 
disease  was  firmly  established;  people  who  had 
fled  returned  to  their  homes;  business  in  com- 
mercial districts,  which  was  at  first  suspended, 
was  resumed;  and  the  health  department  be- 
came the  most  popular  branch  of  the  city  gov- 
ernment, a  position  which  it  has  maintained  un- 
interruptedly for  nearly  half  a  century. 

THIS  popular  triumph  of  sanitation  is  largely 
due  to  the  perfection  of  the  original  Metro- 
politan Law,  which  has  been  declared,  of- 
ficially and  judicially,  to  be  the  most  complete 
piece  of  heialth  legislation  ever  placed  on  the 

statute  books.  From  that 

The  Reform  National    fountain    of    legal    lore 

in  Its  Results  the    whole    country   has 

been  supplied  with  both 
the  principles  and  the  details  of  sanitary  legis- 
lation. 

The  agitation  in  New  York  rapidW  extended 
over  the  entire  country,  and  other  cities  secured 
the  necessary  authority,  the  Metropolitan  Law 
being  the  basis  of  such  health  legislation. 
Within  a  decade  nearly  every  municipality  in 
the  land  had  its  health  laws  and  sanitary  or- 
dinances and  a  competent  authority  to  enforce 
them. 

The  enormous  influence  which  this  reform 
has  had  upon  the  health  and  domestic  life  of 


VICTORY  159 

the  people  can  never  be  estimated.  A  reference 
to  the  former  and  present  sickness  and  death- 
rates  of  New  York  enables  us  to  approximate 
the  vast  saving  of  life  and  consequent  preven- 
tion of  sickness  and  human  misery  that  has  re- 
sulted from  health  laws  founded  on  the  Metro- 
politan Law  and  intelligently  but  rightly  en- 
forced. Before  the  passage  of  that  law  the  an- 
nual death-rate  of  the  city  fluctuated  between 
28  and  40  per  1,000  population;  since  that  law 
went  into  effect  it  has  steadily  fallen  until  it  has 
reached  the  low  figure  of  fifteen  to  the  thou- 
sand, or  a  saving  of  more  than  twenty  thousand 
lives  annually  when  the  population  of  New  York 
was  only  about  one  million,  and  of  nearly 
10,000  lives  of  the  present  population.  If  we  ex- 
tend this  estimate  to  the  whole  country,  of 
ninety-five  million  people,  we  may  gain  a  faint 
conception  of  the  inestimable  benefits  which  the 
application  of  sanitary  knowledge  to  the  daily 
life  of  a  people  can  accomplish. 


VI 
The  Legal  Work  of  Dorman  Bridgeman  Eaton 


The  following  chapter  consists  of  the  address  delivered 
by  Dr.  Stephen  Smith  on  the  occasion  of  the  memorial 
service  of  Hon.  Dorman  B.  Eaton,  January  21,  1899. 
We  have  inserted  it  immediately  following  his  historic 
review  of  the  events  which  led  up  to  the  great  public 
health  reform  of  1865-1866,  not  only  because  it  is  a 
fitting  tribute  to  the  memory  of  one  to  whom  the  citi- 
zens of  New  York  are  indebted  for  many  improve- 
ments in  the  administration  of  the  municipal  govern- 
ment, but  because  it  brings  together  in  one  compact 
perspective  the  legal  and  sanitary  requirements  of 
modern  preventive  medicine,  —  F.  A. 


HE  progress  of  the  race  is  largely 
affected  in  each  generation  by 
a  few  pioneers  who,  with  toil 
and  sacrifice,  prepare  the  way 
for  the  advance.     Of  these  pio- 
neers   some    blaze    the    future 
course  in   the   unexplored   and 
trackless  forest;  others  remove  the  obstructions 
which  impede  the  builders;  while  a  few  expert 
engineers     bridge     the     rivers. 
Unrecognized     tunnel   the  mountains   and  lay 
Pioneers         broad  and  deep  the  foundations 
of    the    great    highway    along 
which  humanity  passes  to  a  higher  civilization. 
Unfortunately   these   pioneers    are   not   always 
known  to  public  fame,  and  far  too  often,  though 
benefactors  of  their  race,  pass  away  without  a 
proper  recognition  of  their  services. 

This  apparent  neglect  is  not  due  to  a  lack  of 
appreciafion  of  their  work  by  the  people,  but 
rather  to  the  fact  that  their  labors  are  per- 
formed in  obscurity,  and  hence  are  unknown. 
Far  in  the  wilderness,  or  deep  in  the  tunnel,  or 
in  the  mire  of  the  caisson,  they  toil  all  unseen 


(163) 


164  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

by  their  generation,  sacrificing  health  and  often 
life  while  seaching  for  the  true  pathway  or  lay- 
ing its  foundations.  When  the  bridges  are 
builded,  the  tunnels  completed,  and  the  broad 
highway  is  thrown  open  for  travel  and  traffic, 
few  or  none  of  the  passing  throng  give  a  mo- 
ment's thought  to  the  labors  and  sacrifices  of 
the  builders,  or  the  tribute  of  a  sigh  to  the  mem- 
ory of  those  who  perished  at  their  work. 

Impressed  with  a  sense  of  public  obligation 
and  of  a  duty  to  the  memory  of  a  citizen  with 
whose  labors  and  sacrifices  in  the  interests  of 
this  city  I  had  great  opportunities  to  become  fa- 
miliar, it  has  been  a  grateful  task  to  place  on 
record  some  of  the  incidents  in  the  life  of  Hon. 
Dorman  B.  Eaton  as  they  came  under  my  per- 
sonal observation.  He  was  by  nature,  educa- 
tion, and  association  a  reformer  of  the  civil  ad- 
ministration. Born  and  bred  in  the  rural  com- 
munities of  Vermont,  educated  at  Harvard,  a 
partner  of  the  famous  Judge  Kent,  of  this  city, 
and  an  associate  of  men  of  the  type  of  William 
Curtis  Noyes,  Charles  O'Conor,  and  others  of 
equal  reputation,  Mr.  Eaton  was  admirably 
equipped  for  the  great  work  to  which  he  de- 
voted so  much  of  his  life  and  energies. 

NOR  was  he  a  reformer  whose  methods  were 
simply  destructive  of  what  he  regarded  as 
wrong  or  evil  in  the  municipal  government; 
on  the  contrary,  his  mind  was  eminently  con- 


LEGAL    WORK 


165 


structive,  and  consequently  he  sought  to  remedy 
defects  by  substituting  the  new 

A  Constructive     ^^1*''^^*/°^  *^.  '']^  ^°*^  7°^'* 
Reformer  ^^      ^^  httle  friction  and  dis- 

turbance as  possible.  Thus  he 
quietly  and  without  observation,  as  a  master 
builder,  laid  foundations  and  reared  the  massive 
superstructures  of  four  of  the  best-organized 
and  most  efficient  departments  of  our  city  gov- 
ernment—  viz.,  the  Department  of  Health,  the 
Fire  Department,  the  Department  of  Docks,  the. 
Police  Judiciary. 

MY  personal  acquaintance  with  Mr.  Eaton  be- 
gan in  the  year  1864,  when  we  became  as- 
sociated in  an  effort  to  secure  reforms  in 
the  sanitary  government  of  the   City  of  New 
York.     Although  prior  to  this  date  there  had 

been  periods  of  agita- 

Character  of  Previous     *^°°  ^"^  ^T^^  1^  "^°'^'^ 
Agitation  ^"^'^i':'^*   ^^^"h   orga- 

nization,        especially 

when     epidemics,     like     cholera,     visited     the 

city     and     the     utter     worthlessness     of     our 

health    officials    became    apparent,    yet    there 

had  been  no  such  organized  effort  as  that  of 

1864.      Previous  agitation  had,  however,  been 

very  useful  in  preparing  the  way  for  the  final 

struggle,  by  creating  a  popular  interest  in  these 

reforms  and  in  rendering  the  public  mind  both 

sympathetic  and  receptive. 


166  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

IN  1855  the  Academy  of  Medicine  applied  to 
the  Legislature  for  relief  from  the  evils  of  an 

insufficient  health  organization,  and  as  a  re- 
sult a  committee  of  that  body  investigated  the 
sanitary  condition  of  the  city.    It  appeared  that 

there  were  four  separate  de- 

Incompetent        partments  devoted  to  the  con- 

Health  Officers       servation  of  the  public  health. 

First,  was  the  Board  of 
Health,  composed  of  the  Aldermen  and  Mayor. 
When  this  body  was  organized  as  a  Board  of 
Health  it  had  supreme  power,  both  in  the  abate- 
ment of  nuisances  and  the  expenditure  of 
money.  So  much  and  so  justly  was  this  board 
feared,  that  Fernando  Wood,  while  Mayor,  re- 
fused to  call  it  into  existence  during  an  epi- 
demic of  cholera,  declaring  that  the  Board  of 
Health  was  more  to  be  feared  than  the  pes- 
tilence. 

Second,  was  the  Commissioners  of  Health, 
composed  of  the  Mayor  and  the  Recorder,  the 
City  Inspector,  the  Health  Commissioner,  the 
Resident  Physician,  and  the  Port  Health  Officer. 
This  body  had  no  adequate  power  and  was  per- 
fectly useless  both  for  good  arid  evil. 

Third,  was  the  Resident  Physician,  whose  du- 
ties were  limited  to  visiting  the  sick  poor. 

Fourth,  was  the  City  Inspector,  a  most  formi- 
dable official  politically,  for  he  had  the  right  to 
expend  annually  $1,000,000  without  "let  or  hin- 
drance."   His  jurisdiction  extended  to  the  clean- 


LEGAL    WORK  167 


ing  of  the  street,  gathering  vital  statistics,  and 
preserving  the  public  health  by  the  appoint- 
ment of  health  wardens  for  each  ward. 

The  investigation  showed  that  this  depart- 
ment, the  only  one  which  actually  exercised 
public  health  functions,  was  permeated  with 
corruption,  ignorance,  and  venality.  The  City 
Inspector  was  the  lowest  type  of  ward  politician, 
the  vital  statistics  were  crude  and  unreliable, 
there  was  no  pretense  of  cleaning  the  streets, 
and  the  health  wardens  were  for  the  most  part 
keepers  of  saloons.  It  was  shown  in  the  ev- 
idence that  no  health  warden  ever  dared  to  visit 
a  house  where  there  was  a  case  of  contagious 
disease.  One,  who  was  asked  the  best  method  of 
preventing  smallpox,  replied:  "Burn  sulphur  in 
the  room."  Another,  asked  to  define  the  term 
"hygiene,"  said :  "It  is  a  mist  rising  from  wet 
grounds." 

THE  report  of  this  committee  created  a  pro- 
found sensation  and  gave  the  first  impetus 
to  a  reform  movement.    A  number  of  prom- 
inent   physicians    and    influential    citizens    be- 
came deeply  interested  in  the  subject  and  de- 
termined to   secure  proper 
Reform  Movement     legislation.        Health     bills 
Born  were      annually     prepared 

and  sent  to  the  Legislature 
only  to  be  rejected  under  the  direction  of  the 
City  Inspector,  whose  $1,000,000  was  expended 


168  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

^^— B^l— ^^i— ^i^— BB— ■— a— MMK— MMMlMW^reniMmi  I— »n»MMM—— W^^^M^^I—^— » 

freely  in  the  lobby  at  Albany.  But  the  agitation 
increased  in  force  with  successive  defeats,  a 
large  and  still  larger  number  of  people  were 
added  to  the  ranks  of  the  reformers  of  the  Cit- 
izens' Association  in  1864,  with  Peter  Cooper  as 
President  and  upwards  of  a  hundred  of  the 
leading  citizens  as  members. 

The  moving  spirit  in  organizing  and  managing 
this  powerful  body  was  Mr.  Nathaniel  Sands, 
an  ardent  and  enthusiastic  sanitarian.  Two  de- 
partments were  created  in  the  Association, 
through  which  the  principal  work  was  to  be 
done;  viz.,  a  Council  of  Law  and  a  Council  of 
Hygiene.  Mr.  Eaton  was  an  active  member  of 
the  former,  and  I  was  for  a  considerable  time 
Secretary  of  the  latter.  Thus  we  were  brought 
into  frequent  consultation  over  a  public  health 
law,  which  the  Association  had  determined  to 
have  prepared  for  the  next  Legislature. 

It  was  decided  that  the  Council  of  Hygiene 
should  make  a  first  draft  of  the  bill  in  which 
should  be  incorporated  the  necessary  sanitary 
provisions.  This  draft  was  then  to  be  submitted 
to  the  Legal  Council  for  completion  in  legis- 
lative form.  As  secretary  of  the  Council  of  Hy- 
giene I  had  to  prepare  the  first  draft  of  the  bill, 
which  was  done  along  the  lines  of  former  bills 
and  seemed  to  the  members  to  be  a  very  perfect 
piece  of  work.  When,  however,  the  bill  came 
from  the  Legal  Council,  scarcely  a  shred  of  the 
original  draft  was  recognizable. 


LEGAL    WORK  169 


THOUGH  the  Legal  Council  was  composed  of 
the  leading  lawyers  of  the  city  at  that  time, 
the  revision  and  completion  of  the  health 
law  was  committed  to  Mr.  Eaton,  a  junior  mem- 
ber.     This  selection  proved  to  be  of  immense 
importance  to  the  immediate  san- 
The  Right       itary    interests    of    this    city,    and 

Man  secondarily  to  the  creation  and  ad- 

ministration of  the  health  laws  of 
the  United  States.  The  field  of  sanitary  legisla- 
tion was  entirely  uncultivated  in  this  country 
at  that  time,  and  the  principles  on  which  health 
laws  should  be  based  were  unrecognized,  except 
by  the  more  advanced  students. 

Mr.  Eaton  fortunately  proved  to  be  one  of  the 
few  citizens  who  had  kept  pace  with  the  prog- 
ress of  sanitary  reforms  in  England,  and  en- 
tered fully  into  the  spirit  of  the  great  move- 
ment that  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  had  agi- 
tated the  people  of  that  country.  Alarmed  by 
the  high  death-rate  annually  reported  by  the 
Registrar-General,  and  informed  that  the  larger 
part  was  due  to  preventable  diseases,  the  public 
demanded  adequate  remedial  measures  of  the 
government.  The  contest  was  long  and  most 
exciting,  the  issues  often  being  carried  into  the 
arena  of  politics.  The  Prime  Minister  once  de- 
clared that  there  was  such  a  craze  about  sanita- 
tion that  the  rallying  cry  of  an  election  cam- 
paign might  well  be  ''Sanitas  sanitatum,  et  om- 
nia sanitasJ' 


170  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

The  triumph  of  the  reformers  was  finally  com- 
plete, and  England  adopted  a  code  of  health 
laws  that  are  models  of  excellence,  and  which, 
in  their  enforcement,  have  made  its  cities  and 
towns  the  healthiest  in  the  world. 

When  our  health  bill  came  from  the  hands 
of  Mr.  Eaton  it  was  evident  in  every  line  that  he 
had  made  an  exhaustive  study  of  the  English 
health  code  and  had  become  thoroughly  imbued 
with  its  spirit.  The  language  was  not  altogether 
familiar,  and  in  the  involved  sentences  there 
were  intimations  of  extraordinary  powers  quite 
unknown  to  our  jurisprudence.  When  he 
brought  the  completed  bill  before  the  Legal  and 
Medical  councils  for  adoption  it  was  subjected 
to  a  most  searching  criticism.  While  most  of  its 
sections  were  clear  and  readily  understood, 
there  were  portions  which  were  so  obscure,  ow- 
ing to  the  methods  of  expression  employed,  that 
the  legal  members  were  in  doubt  as  to  the 
proper  construction  to  be  put  upon  them,  while 
the  medical  members  were  altogether  at  a  loss 
as  to  their  meaning. 

MR.  EATON  explained  the  theory  of  modern 
health  legislation  as  illustrated  by  the  Eng- 
lish laws,  and  contended  that  a  thoroughly 
organized  and  efficient  board  of  health  must 
have  extraordinary  powers,  and  must  not  be 
subordinated  to  any  other  branch  of  the  civil 
service,  not  even  to  the  courts.  What  it  declared 


LEGAL    WORK  171 


to  be  a  nuisance  —  dangerous  to  life  and  detri- 
mental to  health  —  no 
A  Board  With  one  should  call  in  ques- 

Extraordinary  Powers  tion.  When  it  or- 
dered a  nuisance  to  be 
abated  within  a  given  fixed  time  no  mandate 
should  avail  to  stay  its  action  or  the  enforce- 
ment of  its  decree. 

A  board  of  health,  in  his  opinion,  should 
make  its  own  laws,  execute  its  own  laws,  and 
sit  in  judgment  on  its  own  acts.  It  must  be  an 
imperium  in  imperio,  England,  the  foremost 
country  in  the  world  in  the  cultivation  of  san- 
itary science  and  in  the  application  of  its  prin- 
ciples to  practice,  had  by  its  legislation  for  a 
quarter  of  a  century  established  a  precedent 
which  it  was  right  and  safe  for  us  to  follow. 

He  predicted  that  if  this  bill  became  a  law  its 
operations  would  be  so  beneficial  that  it  would 
not  only  become  very  popular  in  this  city,  but 
that  it  would  be  the  basis  of  future  health  legis- 
lation in  this  country.  He  believed,  however, 
that  no  legislature  would  pass  a  bill  containing 
such  powers  if  these  powers  were  made  a 
prominent  feature  of  the  bill.  For  that  reason 
he  had  adopted  that  involved  expression  pe- 
culiar to  English  law  which  required  a  judicial 
interpretation  to  determine  the  precise  mean- 
ing. The  bill  was  approved  in  the  form  pre- 
sented by  Mr.  Eaton,  and  preparation  was  made 
to  secure  its  passage. 


172  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

AS  the  City  Inspector  with  his  health  wardens 
always  appeared  at  Albany  when  a  health 
bill    was   before    the    Legislature,    denying 
vociferously  the  alleged  unsanitary  condition  of 
the  city,  Mr.  Eaton  advised  that  the  Association 
make  a  careful  inspection  of  the 

The  Fight  for     ^^^^    ^^^^    ^^^    ^^^    inspectors. 

the  Bitl  This    inspection    was    organized 

by  the  Council  of  Hygiene  and 
prosecuted  during  the  summer  of  1864  by  3^oung 
physicians,  and  was  the  most  exhaustive  study 
of  the  sanitary  condition  ever  made  of  a  city, 
even  by  officials.  The  results  v^ere  published  in 
a  large  volume  which  has  been  pronounced  by 
authorities  at  home  and  abroad  as  equal  to  the 
best  official  reports  of  European  cities. 

The  bill  was  early  introduced  into  the  Legisla- 
ture of  1865.  In  due  time  it  came  before  a  joint 
committee  of  both  houses,  with  Senator  Andrew 
D.  White  in  the  chair.  The  City  Inspector,  with 
his  health  wardens,  was  present,  and  a  large  at- 
tendance of  members  with  several  prominent 
citizens  of  New  York.  At  Mr.  Eaton's  request 
I  described  the  deplorable  sanitary  condition  of 
the  city  as  revealed  by  our  inspections  and  ex- 
plained the  medical  features  of  the  bill.  He 
followed  with  a  brilliant  and  exhaustive  speech 
on  the  nature  of  sanitary  legislation  and  the 
value  to  cities  of  adequate  health  laws  admin- 
istered by  Well-organized  boards  of  health. 

At  the  conclusion  of  the  hearing  the  members 


LEGAL    WORK  173 


of  the  committee  assured  us  that  if  the  two 
houses  were  in  session  they  would  pass  the  bill 
at  once.  But  we  were  doomed  to  disappoint- 
ment. The  City  Inspector  secured  delays,  and 
meantime  employed  through  his  agents  the 
means  at  his  command  to  defeat  the  bill.  The 
agitation,  however,  was  continued  during  the 
year,  chiefly  through  the  New  York  Times,  then 
under  the  management  of  Mr.  Raymond,  an 
ardent  reformer. 

jVfR.  EATON  advised  the  Medical  Council  to 
-*■    *  interest  the  physicians  of  the  country,  and 
especially  urge  them  not  to  nominate  men 
who  had  voted  against  the  bill  in  the  last  Legis- 
lature.    This  plan  was  carried  out,  and  seven- 
teen former  members  failed 
A  Law  Enacted     of   renomination    to    the   As- 
and  Sustained      sembly.      The   result   of   this 
scheme  succeeded  admirably, 
for   the  new  Legislature  was   to   some   extent 
pledged  to  support  the  bill  when  they  came  to 
the   capitol.      The   bill   promptly  passed   both 
houses   early   in   the   session    of   1866,    and   in 
March  the  Metropolitan  Board  of  Health  was 
organized.     Mr.  Eaton  accepted  the  position  of 
counsellor  to  the  board,  which  position  he  re- 
tained several  years. 

As  he  had  anticipated,  a  suit  against  the  Board 
was  early  commenced  to  test  the  constitu- 
tionality of  the  law.    He  was  very  apprehensive 


174  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

of  the  results,  and  made  the  most  thorough  prep- 
aration to  argue  the  case.  He  was  successful 
in  the  lower  courts,  and  finally  won  in  the  Court 
of  Appeals  by  a  majority  of  one.  He  always  re- 
garded his  success  in  the  management  of  this 
case  as  one  of  the  most  important  events  of  his 
life,  for  on  the  decision  of  the  highest  court  de- 
pended the  fate  of  health  legislation  in  this  coun- 
try. 

NO  one  unfamiliar  with  the  sanitary  condition 
of  this  city  prior  to  1864  can  form  any  ad- 
equate conception  of  the  enormous  benefits 
conferred,  not  only  upon  this  metropolis,  but 
upon  the  entire  country,  by  the  labors  of  Mr. 

Eaton  and  his  associates  in 
The  Regeneration      securing    to    it    the    Metro- 
of  New  York  politan  Health  Law.     Dur- 

ing the  former  period  New 
York  was  a  prey  to  every  form  of  pestilence 
known  to  man.  Smallpox,  the  most  preventable 
of  contagious  diseases,  was  epidemic  in  this  city 
every  five  years,  and  created  a  large  death-rate 
among  the  children.  Scarlet  fever  and  diph- 
theria spread  through  the  city  without  the 
slightest  effort  on  the  part  of  the  officials  to  con- 
trol them.  Cholera  visited  us  once  in  ten  years 
without  any  adequate  measures  of  prevention. 
The  mortality  was  greater  than  of  any  other  city 
of  a  civilized  country,  it  being  estimated  that 
7,000   died  yearly   from   preventable   diseases. 


LEGAL    WORK  175 


The  tenement-house  population  lived  under 
the  most  unhealthy  and  degrading  conditions, 
a  prey  to  greedy  landlords,  and  without  any  pos- 
sible relief  or  redress.  In  one  notorious  build- 
ing, which  covered  an  ordinary  city  lot,  were 
fifty  families ,  with  a  total  population  of  five 
hundred  persons. 

Here  every  form  of  domestic  pestilence 
could  be  found  at  all  seasons  of  the  year. 
Still  more  deplorable  was  the  condition 
of  the  tenants  of  cellars.  Of  these  so-called 
"Troglodytes"  there  were  5,000  living  in  rooms 
the  ceilings  of  which  were  below  the  level  of  the 
surface  of  the  street. 

To  the  present  generation  it  may  appear  in- 
credible that  there  was  neither  law,  ordinance, 
nor  department  of  the  city  government  capable 
of  giving  the  slightest  relief.  This  was  illustrated 
in  an  attempt  to  break  up  a  fever  nest  in  1860. 
The  landlord  refused  to  make  the  slightest  re- 
pairs, or  cleansing,  in  a  tenement  house  from 
which  upwards  of  one  hundred  cases  of  fever 
have  been  removed  to  the  hospital. 

The  attorney  to  the  Police  Department 
was  unable  to  find  any  law  or  ordinance 
by  which  he  could  be  compelled  to  cleanse, 
repair,  or  vacate  the  house.  It  was  only 
by  confronting  him  in  court,  to  which 
he  had  been  brought  on  a  fictitious  charge,  with 
a  reporter,  that  he  was  induced  to  take  any 
steps  to  improve  the  tenement. 


176  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

NOW  everything  relating  to  the  public  health 
is  so  changed  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to 
realize  the  condition  of  the  city  in  1866.  The 
change  began  with  the  very  organization  of  the 
Metropolitan  Board.    Within  a  few  days  of  that 
event,    cholera,    which    had    dev- 
Epidemics      astated  portions  of  Europe,  made 
Checked       its  appearance  in  this  city;  but  it 
met  with  a  far  different  reception 
than  that  of  former  visitations.     The  first  case 
was  quarantined  within  an  hour  of  its  occur- 
rence; the  clothing  of  the  patient  was  destroyed, 
the    room    disinfected,    and    a    sanitary    guard 
placed  over  the  house.    No  other  case  appeared 
in  that  quarter  of  the  city.     There  were  several 
similar  outbreaks  in  different  parts  of  the  town, 
but  each  was  treated  with  the  same  vigilance 
and  energy,  and  the  contagion  never  secured  a 
foothold  in  the  city  or  the  metropolitan  district. 
Though  cholera  has  since  appeared  in  Europe 
at  its   usual  intervals,   and   has   several   times 
been  at  our  doors,  it  has  not  been  able  to  invade 
the    city    for    a    period    of    thirty-four    years. 
Smallpox,  which  once  decimated  the  child  popu- 
lation every  five  years,  has  not  been  epidemic 
in   a   whole   generation.      Diphtheria    and   the 
whole  brood  of  domestic  pestilences  are  dimin- 
ishing in  frequency   and  fatality.      Even  con- 
sumption,   so    common    and    fatal    among    the 
poor,  is  rapidly  disappearing  in  consequence  of 
the  improved  condition  of  the  tenement  houses. 


LEGAL    WORK  '^'^^ 


And  what  a  vast  change  has  been  made  in  the 
homes  of  the  poor!  No  human  habitation  is 
undergromid;  the  ancient  rooker}^,  with  its  five 
hundred  inhabitants,  is  a  past  number;  the 
dark,  foul  courts  are  disappearing,  and  in  their 
places  have  arisen  the  modern  tenements,  with 
their  light,  airy,  and  cheerful  apartments,  and 
all  the  conditions  necessary  to  family  health 
and  domestic  happiness.  The  laws  and  ordi- 
nances all  conspire  to  compel  the  landlords  to 
remedy  every  defect  on  complaint  of  the  tenant; 
the  penalty  being  that  the  latter  need  not  pay 
rent  until  the  home  is  made  habitable  in  a  san- 
itary sense.  The  vital  statistics  show  that  hu- 
man life  is  lengthening  in  this  city,  and  that  the 
entire  metropolis  is  more  healthy  as  a  place  of 
residence  than  the  sorrounding  country  towns. 

BUT  the  beneficent  results  of  the  labors  of  Mr. 
'  Eaton  and  his  associates  in  the  field  of  san- 
itary legislation   are   not  confined   to  New 
York.    As  he  predicted,  the  Metropolitan  Health 
Law  became  the  basis  of  sanitary  legislation 
throughout  the  country.     At  the 
Sanitation  in     time  of  its  enactment  the  muni- 
Other  Cities      cipalities   of  the   United  States 
were  as  destitute  of  health  laws 
and  regulations  as  the  City  of  New  York.     To- 
day there  is  not  a  city,  or  even  village,  that  has 
not  its  laws  and  ordinances  relating  to  the  pre- 
servation and  promotion  of  the  public  health 


178  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

based  on  the  original  law  drawn  by  Mr.  Eaton. 
And  the  same  remark  is  true  of  the  organized 
health  administration  of  the  States  of  the  Union, 
for  on  analysis  it  will  be  found  that  their  san- 
itary legislation  is  in  harmony  with  the  provi- 
sions of  that  law.  Mr.  Eaton's  work  was  broad 
and  fundamental. 

AT  that  period  the  old  Volunteer  Fire  Depart- 
was  quite  as  discreditable  to  the  city  as  was 
its  health  organization.      Intrenched  in  the 
political  organizations  of  the  citjr,  it  wielded  a 
power  second  only  to  that  of  the  great  political 

parties  themselves.  It 
Reorganization  of  the  required  the  strength 
Fire  Department  and  courage  of  a  Her- 
cules to  purify  this  de- 
partment by  removing  the  existing  elements,  re- 
constructing the  entire  organization,  substitut- 
ing a  paid  for  a  volunteer  membership,  and  re- 
quiring a  high  grade  of  qualification  of  its 
officers. 

But,  aided  by  the  Citizens'  Association,  Mr. 
Eaton  undertook  this  reform,  and  after  a 
fierce  and  prolonged  struggle  carried  it  to  a 
successful  conclusion.  The  law  creating  the 
fire  department,  like  that  creating  the  health  de- 
partment, is  a  model  of  intelligent  discrimina- 
tion of  all  the  conditions  essential  to  the  effi- 
ciency of  the  service  and  its  permanent  free- 
dom from  the  vices  inherent  in  the  old  system. 


LEGAL    WORK  179 


5CARCELY  had  these  reforms  been  perfected 
when  Mr.  Eaton's  attention  was  turned  by 
the  Citizens'  Association  to  the  necessity  of 
having  a  department  in  the  city  government  de- 
voted exclusively  to  the  care  and  management 

of  the  public  docks. 

Creation  of  a  Dock     wharves,  and  other  water- 

Department  front  interests  of  the  city. 

This  movement  resulted  in 
the  passage  of  the  law  drawn  by  Mr.  Eaton 
creating  the  Department  of  Docks.  Though 
this  Department  was  to  occupy  an  entirely  new 
field  in  the  Municipal  Administration,  the  law 
shows  in  every  section  the  same  mastery  of  all 
the  details  peculiar  to  Mr.  Eaton's  legislative 
work. 

FINALLY,  Mr.  Eaton  undertook,  single-handed, 
to  reform  the  police  judiciary.  He  pre- 
pared a  bill  creating  the  civil  magistrates 
to  take  the  place  of  the  police  justices  and  re- 
forming in  many  particulars  the  methods  of  pro- 
cedure. This  law  is  regarded 
Reform  of  the  as  a  great  improvement  upon 
Police  Judiciary     the  previous  police  judiciary, 

but  the  bill  became  a  law  only 
after  a  protracted  struggle  with  the  old  police 
justices,  a  struggle  which  Mr.  Eaton  maintained 
alone,  relying  upon  the  merits  of  the  measure 
which  he  advocated.  The  consensus  of  opinion 
of  legal  authorities  is  that  the  new  law  effected 


180  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


radical  reforms  of  great  importance  in  these  in- 
ferior courts  of  criminal  jurisprudence  in  New 
York  City. 

IF  we  may  estimate  Mr.  Eaton's  mental  traits 
by  the  laws  which  he  drafted  in  the  interests 

of  municipal  reform,  we  can  readily  conclude 
that  he  had  a  remarkable  genius  for  constructive 
legislation.    Though  he  was  compelled  to  weave 

into  the  very  woof  of  those 
Mental  Traits  of  laws,  extraordinary  powers, 
Dorman B.Eaton    which      he      acknowledged 

were  of  vital  importance  to 
their  efficiency,  and  yet  would  be  a  menace  to 
the  public,  if  the  laws  were  administered  by 
unscrupulous  persons,  he  succeeded  in  so 
guarding  those  powers  that  these  laws  have 
been  in  operation  upwards  of  a  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury; and,  while  those  who  have  from  time  to 
time  been  called  to  administer  them  have  not 
always  had  the  best  reputation  for  intelligence 
and  civic  virtue,  yet  there  has  at  no  time  been 
any  complaint  of  injustice  in  their  execution, 
nor  has  there  been  any  serious  lapse  in  their 
vigorous  enforcement.  To-day,  as  a  generation 
ago,  they  are  accomplishing  the  full  measure  of 
usefulness  for  which  they  were  designed  by 
their  author. 

Standing  now  at  the  close  of  a  life  so  largely 
devoted  to  the  service  of  his  fellow-men  and 
consecrated  to  the  amelioration  of  human  suf- 


LEGAL    WORK  181 


fering,  and  where  we  may,  in  some  slight  de- 
gree, estimate  the  vast  and  ever-increasing 
fruition  of  its  labors,  how  siiblime  it  appears! 
Monuments  and  memorials  can  but  faintly  sym- 
bolize its  greatness  and  perpetuate  its  enduring 
force.  Mr.  Eaton's  own  thought  of  true  fame 
once  was  expressed  to  me  thus:  "I  ask  only  to 
be  remembered  as  one  who  in  his  sphere  of  life's 
duties  endeavored  to  improve  the  conditions  of 
human  life  around  himJ' 


VII 

The  Occult  Power  of  Filth 


|N  the  retrospect  from  the  vantage 
ground  of  half  a  century  of  san- 
itary progress  we  recognize  that 
during  the  third  quarter  of  the 
last  century  the  people  of  Eng- 
land  were   waging   a   successful 
war   on    domestic   uncleanliness 
as  a  contributory,  if  not  the  sole  cause  of  ep- 
idemic diseases.     The  health  officer  of  England 
insisted  that  domestic  filth  was  the 
Filth         actual   cause    of   many    of    the    low 
Diseases     forms  of  disease,  and  named  them 
accordingly,    "filth   diseases."      This 
official  act  of  the  highest  health  authority  of 
that  country  led  to  the  practice  of  cleanliness 
in  the  home   and  its   surroundings.      Filth  in 
every  form  was  removed  as  the  necessary  re- 
medial measure  against  these  diseases,  with  the 
result  that  not  only  were  foreign  pestilences  pre- 
vented, but  the  whole  brood  of  domestic  dis- 
eases was  greatly  reduced  in  number,  and  the 
severity  of  cases  that  did  occur  was  greatly  di- 
minished in  virulence. 

But  during  the  fourth  quarter  of  the  last  cen- 


(185) 


186  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


tury  the  question  arose  among  scientists,  "Why- 
is  filth  —  that  is,  decomposing  matter  —  the 
prolific  cause  of  disease?"  The  answer  came 
from  the  famous  Pasteur  of  Paris,  and  Lister 
of  Edinburgh.  "Filth  is  dangerous,  because  it 
is  filled  with  germ  life.  The  mere  removal  of 
filth  from  one  locality  to  another  does  not 
render  it  harmless,  except  to  those  who  are  no 
longer  in  personal  contact  with  it."  So-called 
filth  was  indeed  harmless  if  the  germs  it  con- 
tained were  killed. 

THE  whole  scheme  of  sanitation  was  at  once 
changed :  agents  that  would  kill  germs  were 
eagerly    sought    by    many    scientists,    and 
germicides  were  found  in  abundance.     Crema- 
tion  was   most   effectful. 
The  Scheme  of  and  was  available  in  the 

Sanitation  Changed       destruction  of  masses  of 

filth;  but  there  was  a 
phase  of  the  question  that  required  other  meth- 
ods. 

Lister  announced  that  these  disease-produc- 
ing germs  entered  wounds  and  prevented  heal- 
ing, and  that  a  germicide  was  required  which 
would  kill  the  germ  in  the  wound  and  would 
not  injure  the  living,  healthy  tissue.  Further 
investigations  showed  that  these  dangerous 
germs  were  not  confined  to  dust  heaps,  but 
existed  in  the  unclean  recesses  of  the  human 
body. 


THE  OCCULT  POWER  OF  FILTH  187 

Sternberg  startled  the  world  with  the  an- 
nouncement that  an  unclean  human  mouth 
contained  germs  of  the  most  poisonous  charac- 
ter. 

An  eminent  German  surgeon  declared  that 
germs  of  a  dangerous  character  existed  in  the 
folds  of  the  skin  of  the  palms  of  the  hand  which 
no  amount  of  washing  with  soap  and  water 
could  remove,  and  could  be  destroyed  only  by 
some  agent  directly  applied. 

Sanitation  of  the  body  as  well  as  of  the  dust 
heap  now  became  the  paramount  question  and 
especially  did  this  apply  to  the  practice  of  sur- 
gery. 

HOW    infection    affects    the    body    was    the 
supreme  mystery  that  the  scientists  of  the 
past  strove  in  vain  to  penetrate.     By  no  de- 
vices of  their  laboratories  could  they  detect  the 
agents  that  caused  the  epidemic.      There  was 
only    one    satisfactory    explana- 
The  Mystery      ^ion  of  the  origin  and  spread  of 
of   Infection      1^^    devastating   plagues,    which 
seemed  to  fall  from  the  heavens 
on  the  people,  and  that  was  that  epidemics  were 
"a  visitation  of  God"  on  account  of  the  sins  of 
the  people.    Of  course,  the  only  preventive  and 
curative  measure  available  and  effectual  was 
"repentance,  prayer,  and  humiliation," 

It  is  a  cause  of  devout  thankfulness  that  while 
these  things  were  hidden  from  the  "wise  and 


188  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

prudent"  of  former  times,  they  have  in  these 
latter  days  been  revealed  unto  "babes."  No 
event  in  human  history  would  have  more  greatly 
taxed  the  credulity  of  the  most  learned  and  ex- 
perienced physician  of  half  a  century  ago  than 
the  prophecy  that  in  the  early  years  of  the  twen- 
tieth century  school  children  would  be  taught 
by  simple  and  easily  understood  object  lessons 
how  to  prevent  and  how  to  cure  consumption, 
the  Asiatic  cholera,  yellow  fever,  and  other  ep- 
idemics that  have  devastated  cities,  destroyed 
armies,  and  swept  from  the  earth  whole  tribes 
of  primitive  people. 

But  that  prophecy  has  been  literally  fulfilled. 
During  the  last  summer  there  has  been  a  travel- 
ing object  lesson  that  visited  the  different  sec- 
tions of  the  State  of  New  York  and  taught  the 
people,  especially  the  children,  all  the  essential 
facts  as  to  the  nature  of  the  infection  of  tuber- 
culosis, its  effects  on  the  body,  and  the  methods 
of  prevention  and  cure. 

AS  infective  diseases  cause  the  vast  majority 
of  cases  of  severe  and  crippling  affections 
and  of  deaths  in  every  community,  the 
value  of  a  knowledge  of  the  nature  of  infection 
and  how  it  affects  the  body,  by  the  people  of  all 
ranks,  ages,  and  conditions,  cannot  be  estimated 
in  its  influence  on  the  future  of  the  human  race. 
Already  we  learn  that  within  the  period  referred 
to  the  sickness  and  death-rates  of  communities 


THE  OCCULT  POWER  OF  FILTH  189 

where  the  people  have  been  most  thoroughly  in- 
structed as  to  the  nature  of  in- 

How  Infection  f ective  diseases,  and  how  they 
Works  affect  the  body,  have  greatly 

diminished,  and  the  average 
human  life  has  been  markedly  lengthened. 
Indeed,  it  now  seems  possible  to  re- 
store the  patriarchal  age  when  a  man 
may  live  to  be  "an  hundred  and  twenty 
years  old  .  .  .  his  eye  .  .  .  not  dim,  nor  his 
natural  force  abated." 

To  understand  how  infection  affects  the  body 
involves  an  inquiry  as  to  the  nature  of  infection, 
its  mode  of  entrance  into  the  body,  and  its 
operation  on  its  organs  and  tissues.  The  terms 
"infection"  and  "contagion"  are  often  used  as 
synonymous;  but  a  strict  definition  according 
to  the  medical  significance  of  each  limits  the 
former  to  "the  transmission  of  disease  by  actual 
contact  of  the  diseased  part  with  a  healthy  ab- 
sorbent or  abraded  surface,"  and  the  latter  to 
"transmission  through  the  atmosphere  by  float- 
ing germs."  But  in  the  final  analysis  the  cause 
of  disease  in  both  infection  and  contagion  is  so 
similar  in  its  action  that  the  medical  profession 
has  adopted  the  term  "communicable  disease" 
in  all  cases  where  the  disease  is  communicated 
from  one  person  to  another  by  means  of  a 
germ,  whatever  may  be  its  method  of  attack  on 
the  body.  The  common  characteristic  of  "com- 
municable diseases"  is  their  germ  origin. 


190  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

\\l  HAT  is  this  communicable  germ  or  agent? 

^^     A    bacterium  —  a    little    stick,    staff  —  so 
called  from  the  rodlike  shape  it  assumes 
in  the  process  of  growth.     The  individual  bac- 
terium (plural,  bacteria)  is  an  organism  repre- 
senting  a   low  form   of  vegetable 
What  the       life;   resembles  mold;   in  size  the 

Germ  Is  smallest  living  thing  that  can  be 
seen  with  the  microscope;  in 
masses  forming  the  films  floating  on  foul  fluids 
or  covering  decomposing  animal  or  vegetable 
matter.  It  consists  of  a  single  cell,  and  its  mode 
of  increase  when  placed  under  proper  condi- 
tions of  growth  is  by  division  of  the  cell  body; 
the  two  cells  formed  out  of  the  first  being  di- 
vided into  four  before  complete  separation  has 
taken  place;  the  four  dividing  into  eight,  the 
eight  into  sixteen,  the  sixteen  into  thirty- two, 
and  so  on  indefinitely. 

Now,  as  it  requires  only  thirty  minutes  for 
one  cell  to  divide,  it  has  been  estimated  that  a 
single  bacterium  will  in  twenty-four  hours  in- 
crease to  the  number  of  over  sixteen  million 
five  hundred  thousand,  and  in  forty-eight  hours 
to  two  hundred  and  eighty-one  million  five  hun- 
dred thousand.  At  this  rate  of  increase,  in  three 
days  there  would  be  a  mass  of  bacteria  weigh- 
ing about  sixteen  million  pounds.  As  the  mul- 
tiplication of  bacteria  depends  upon  conditions 
that  soon  interfere  with  or  interrupt  their 
growth,  as  the  want  of  food,  their  own  secre- 


THE  OCCULT  POWER  OF  FILTH  191 


tions,  and  certain  natural  forces  operating 
against  them,  these  stupendous  figures  are  use- 
ful only  as  an  illustration  of  the  enormous  fer- 
tility of  these  organisms,  and  their  destructive 
energy  when  they  attack  a  susceptible  living 
body. 

WHAT   is   the   function   of  bacteria   in   the 
economy  of  nature?     It  would  be  surpris- 
ing if  such  a  menace  to  human  life  as 
some   species    of  bacteria   have   proved   them- 
selves to  be  had  no  other  place  among  the  forces 

of  nature  than  to  prevent  the 
The  Function  of      too    rapid    increase    of    the 
Bacteria  human  race  on  this  earth,  as 

our  forefathers  believed.  It 
is  gratifying,  and  quite  satisfying  to  a  revengeful 
spirit,  to  learn  from  the  modern  laboratory  that 
the  special  and  only  function  of  the  bacterium 
is  to  perform  the  duties  of  a  universal  scav- 
enger. It  is  always  seeking  to  decompose  ani- 
mal and  vegetable  matter.  It  lives  on  filth,  riots 
in  it,  and  dies  when  deprived  of  it.  It  enters 
the  human  body  only  in  search  of  filth,  and  if 
it  finds  none  it  does  the  person  no  harm,  and 
dies  either  from  the  want  of  food  or  by  starva- 
tion, or  escapes  from  the  body,  or  secretes  itself 
where  it  may  safely  await  the  creation  of  de- 
composing matter,  when  it  will  begin  its  life- 
work. 

Thus,  there  may  be  and  doubtless  is  at  all 


192  THE   CITY  THAT  WAS 

times  a  great  variety  of  bacteria  of  a  virulent 
type,  quiescent  in  our  bodies  only  for  the  time 
that  they  find  no  decaying  matter  adapted  to 
their  special  tastes  or  wants. 

It  is  a  most  interesting  fact,  therefore,  that 
this  most  deadly  foe  of  man  becomes  dangerous 
only  when  the  latter  is  harboring  in  his  body 
waste  or  decomposing  matters  that  are  slowly 
poisoning  him.  It  is  in  the  process  of  digesting 
this  material  that  the  bacterium  excretes  poi- 
sons —  toxins  —  of  the  most  virulent  nature, 
which  are  absorbed  into  the  blood  of  the  human 
victim,  creating  the  condition  popularly  known 
as  blood  poisoning. 

Bacteria  perform  a  most  important  function 
in  the  economy  of  nature,  viz.,  the  conversion 
of  decaying  and  dead  matter  into  food  for 
plants.  Biologists  assert  that  without  bacteria 
plant  life  on  the  earth  would  be  scanty  or  en- 
tirely wanting;  they  are  the  natural  inter- 
mediaries between  plants  and  animal  in  point 
of  food  production.  They  are  therefore  called 
scavengers,  because  they  live  on  decomposing 
matter;  but  in  the  very  act  of  digesting  such 
waste  they  convert  it  into  products  essential  to 
plant  life  (carbon  dioxide  and  ammonia)  and 
by  their  excretions  restore  to  vegetation  its  chief 
supply  of  food. 

It  appears  on  the  same  authorities  that  bac- 
teria not  only  assist  materially  in  maintaining 
vegetable  and  animal  life  on  this  planet,  but 


THE  OCCULT  POWER  OF  FILTH  193 

"in  the  arts  and  industries  they  are  as  essential 
to  modern  economic  life  as  are  the  ingenious 
mechanical  inventions  of  men.  Many  secret 
processes  now  in  use  in  the  arts  and  manufac- 
tures are  but  devites  to  harness  these  natural 
forces.  Thus  in  the  manufacture  of  linen, 
hemp,  and  sponges,  in  the  butter,  cheese,  and 
vinegar  industries,  in  tobacco-curing,  etc.,  bac- 
teria play  an  important  role." 

IT  naturally  occurs  that  to  meet  the  various 
conditions  under  which  decomposing  matter 

exists  in  nature  there  is  a  great  variety  of 
species  of  bacteria,  each  species  being  adapted 
to  a  special  field  of  operations.     These  species 

are   distinguished  from   one 

Bacteria  for  another  by  the  shapes  they 

Every  Condition      assume  during  their  growth, 

some  being  rod  shaped  (the 
bacillus),  others  spherical  (the  coccus),  and 
others  spiral  (the  spirillum).  Under  one  of 
these  divisions  the  various  species  are  classified. 

In  these  latter  days  of  popular  knowledge  of 
scientific  progress,  but  without  precise  informa- 
tion of  details,  bacteria  are  associated  in  the 
public  mind  with  disease,  especially  of  the  ep- 
idemic form.  While  this  prejudice  is  useful 
in  stimulating  the  people  to  adopt  and  enforce 
preventive  measures  against  conditions  that 
tend  to  proniote  bacterial  life  in  their  homes 
and  in  their  own  persons,  yet  it  should  be  un- 


194  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

derstood  that  comparatively  few  of  the  great 
number  and  variety  of  bacteria  are  pathogenic, 
or  disease  producing,  in  man. 

So  througliout  the  animal  kingdom  we  find 
that  few  are  susceptible  to  a  common  disease; 
or,  in  other  words,  that  the  same  species  of  bac- 
teria attack  in  equal  force  several  varieties  of 
animals. 

The  explanation  of  this  peculiarity  is  found 
in  the  variations  of  the  quality  or  intimate  na- 
ture of  the  tissues  and  organs  of  different  spe- 
cies of  animals.  The  same  may  be  said  of  our 
own  bodies  —  the  several  organs  vary  greatly 
in  their  susceptibility  to  the  attacks  of  the  dif- 
ferent kinds  of  bacteria;  hence  the  latter  are 
classified  as  specific  and  nonspecific,  according 
as  they  cause  specific  or  nonspecific  disease. 

The  distribution  of  bacteria  is  limited  only  by 
the  existence  of  plants  and  animals;  that  is,  the 
existence  of  decomposing  vegetable  and  animal 
matter.  Though  they  are  more  abundant  in  the 
earth  where  such  matter  is  found  most  abun- 
dantly, yet  they  abound  in  the  air,  the  water,  on 
plants,  animals,  and  insects,  on  our  own  bodies, 
and  in  every  cavity  leading  to  the  exterior.  As 
bacteria  are  always  searching  for  food,  the  num- 
ber present  is  a  sure  indication  of  the  degree  of 
cleanliness  of  the  thing,  individual,  or  locality 
where  they  are  found. 

The  movements  of  bacteria  from  one  point 
to  another  are  through  the  medium  of  some 


THE  OCCULT  POWER  OF  FILTH  195 


other  mode  of  conveyance  than  their  own  bodies 
afford.  Thus  they  are  borne  by  the  water,  by 
vegetation,  by  animals  of  every  kind,  especially 
insects,  by  the  air  on  particles  of  dust.  The 
typhoid  bacillus,  borne  in  water  and  milk,  has 
caused  innumerable  epidemics  of  that  dreaded 
disease. 

THE   tubercle   bacillus   is   borne   on   the   air 
through  the  medium  of  particles  of  dust, 
and  in  cities  where  the  victims  of  tuber- 
culosis  scatter   these   germs   profusely   in   the 
streets,     public     conveyances,     churches,     and 

places  of  resort,  in  the  act  of 

The  Deadly         coughing,  sneezing,  and  spit- 

Tubercle  Bacillus    ting,  the  dust  borne  on  the 

winds  is  a  constant  and  most 
fertile  source  of  infection  of  tuberculosis.  In 
a  city  like  New  York  thousands  are  annually 
infected  by  the  dust-borne  tubercle  bacilli,  not 
only  by  inhaling  them  in  the  street,  but  even 
more  certainly  in  the  quiet  of  their  homes, 
where  the  germ-bearing  dust  accumulates  in 
clothing,  bedding,  carpets,  rugs,  and  upholstered 
furniture,  and  is  daily  forced  into  the  air  of  the 
living  rooms  by  broom  and  duster. 

Foul  as  is  the  air  of  the  unventilated  tene- 
ments of  the  poor,  it  has  been  demonstrated 
that  the  dust  which  saturates  the  furniture, 
carpets,  rugs,  and  hangings  of  residences  of  the 
wealthy  contains  sixty  per  cent  of  street  filth. 


196  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


An  authority  says,  "The  most  widely  dis- 
tributed pathogenic  microorganism  (disease- 
causing  bacterium)  in  the  air  is  the  tubercle 
bacillus,  the  cause  of  consumption  and  a  large 
variety  of  other  ailments,  such  as  hipjoint  dis- 
ease, caries  of  the  spine,  etc.  Over  one  hundred 
thousand  persons  die  annually  from  consump- 
tion alone  in  the  United  States,  and  it  is  esti- 
mated that  there  are  over  two  million  people 
afflicted  with  the  disease  in  one  form  or  an- 
other. All  of  these  sufferers  are  expectorating 
billions  of  tubercle  bacilli  daily." 

CONSIDERING  the  second  inquiry  as  to  how 
infection  affects  the  body,  we  must  con- 
stantly  bear   in   mind   that   a   bacterium, 
though  a  scavenger,  is  a  conservator  of  nature. 
Its  real  function  in  the  orderly  processes   of 

animal  and  vegetable  life  is 

How  Bacteria      to  utilize  waste  for  the  pre- 

Affect  the  Body     servation   and   promotion   of 

animal  and  vegetable  life  on 
this  planet  where  the  conditions  are  so  favor- 
able to  both. 

Therefore,  wherever  we  find  bacteria  in  the 
active  processes  of  growth,  that  is,  multiplica- 
tion, we  may  be  assured  that  they  have  found 
matter  that  should  be  rescued  from  waste  and 
converted  into  useful  food  for  plants.  It  follows 
that  when  we  find  a  bacterium  actively  growing 
in  any  part  of  our  bodies,  it  has  found  some 


THE  OCCULT  POWER  OF  FILTH  197 


form  of  decaying  matter  that  is  not  only  no 
longer  useful  to  our  bodies,  but  is  in  fact  harm- 
ful and  should  be  removed. 

It  is  also  important  to  understand  that  waste 
matter  is  found  under  a  great  variety  of  condi- 
tions, and  that  for  its  proper  conversion  into 
useful  food  for  plants  there  must  be  a  corre- 
spondingly large  number  of  species  of  bacteria 
each  having  its  special  field  of  operation.  It  is 
due  to  this  variety  of  bacteria  that  there  are 
so  many  infective  diseases;  for  each  species  of 
bacteria  creates  its  own  individual  form  of  dis- 
ease. 

This  statement  requires  the  following  expla- 
nation, viz.,  a  bacterium  in  a  quiescent  state 
is  harmless;  everyone  has  within  his  body  in- 
numerable bacteria,  as  the  tubercle  and  typhoid 
bacilli;  but  they  are  inert,  and  hence  innocuous. 
It  is  only  when  they  find  their  proper  food,  de- 
caying matter,  that  they  begin  to  multiply,  and 
in  that  act  they  secret  a  poison,  toxin,  which  is 
absorbed,  and,  entering  the  circulation,  causes 
in  the  individual  a  special  class  of  symptoms 
peculiar  to  that  toxin,  or  poison. 

These  symptoms  constitute  a  disease,  the  tech- 
nical name  of  which  is  usually  fanciful,  depend- 
ing on  some  feature  of  the  symptoms,  but  ex- 
plaining nothing  as  to  its  essential  nature. 

For  example,  the  typhoid  bacillus  finds  its 
food  in  certain  minute  glands  of  the  small 
bowels.      If   these   glands    are   in    a   perfectly 


198  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


healthy  state  when  the  bacillus  enters  the  di- 
gestive tract,  the  germ  will  pass  over  them  and 
disappear  from  the  body  perfectly  harmless. 
But  if  the  bacillus  finds  its  appropriate  food  — 
dead  or  decomposing  matter —  in  the  glands, 
it  at  once  takes  up  its  abode  in  them  and  "begins 
housekeeping;"  that  is,  it  begins  to  multiply  ac- 
cording to  the  method  of  fission  of  its  cell  and 
rate  of  multiplication,  already  described.  Dur- 
ing this  process  the  multiplying  cells  excrete  a 
toxin,  which,  being  absorbed,  creates  a  fever, 
the  result  of  a  true  blood  poisoning.  This  fever 
is  called  typhoid,  because  its  prominent  symp- 
tom, stupor,  resembles  that  of  typhus  fever. 
The  name,  therefore,  signifies  nothing  as  to  the 
nature  of  the  disease. 

THE  poisoning  of  the  body  by  the  excreted 
toxin   of   the   multiplying   cells,   which   is 
simply  plant  food,  occurs  because  it  is  re- 
moved only  in  part  by  the  digestive  organs,  the 
circulation  that  conveys  it  to  the  other  eliminat- 
ing organs  being  efficient  for  that 
The  Toxin     purpose.      Could  all  of  this  toxin 
Secreted      be  removed  as  fast  as  it  is  excreted, 
and  not  enter  the  circulation,  there 
would  be  no  fever. 

The  termination  of  this  process  must  be  either 
the  death  of  the  colony  from  exhaustion  of  the 
food  supply  in  the  glands,  or  the  exhaustion  of 
the  patient  by  the   excess   of  toxins   that   ac- 


THE  OCCULT  POWER  OF  FILTH 


199 


cumulate  in  the  body.  As  the  activity  of  the 
bacillus  depends  upon  the  food  supplied,  the 
severity  and  length  of  the  fever  varies  in  dif- 
ferent individuals.  Some  are  immune,  because 
the  glands  that  furnish  the  food  of  the  typhoid 
bacillus  are  in  a  state  of  high  health;  others 
have  a  brief  and  mild  attack,  because  the  food 
supply  is  scant  owing  to  a  slight  impairment 
of  the  integrity  of  the  glands;  but  with  a  con- 
siderable number  in  every  epidemic  the  food  is 
ample  to  sustain  the  creation  of  an  immense 
colony  of  bacilli  which  destroys  the  victim  by 
an  overdose  of  poison. 

The  final  disposition  of  the  typhoid  bacilli, 
after  a  course  of  fever,  was  believed  to  be  by 
their  elimination  from  the  body  through  the 
various  organs  devoted  to  the  discharge  of  waste 
products;  but  recent  investigations  have  proved 
that  the  typhoid  bacillus  may  remain  in  the 
body  for  long  periods  without  apparently  affect- 
ing the  health  of  the  person,  but  when  com- 
municated to  another,  it  will  cause  an  attack 
of  fever  of  the  most  virulent  type.  In  one  in- 
stance an  outbreak  of  typhoid  fever  was  traced 
to  a  woman  who  had  fever  upward  of  fifty 
years  ago.  It  was  found  that  the  excretions  of 
her  body  contained  immense  quantities  of  living 
typhoid  bacilli.  She  was  a  cook  by  trade,  and  it 
was  found  on  tracing  her  history  that  wherever 
she  had  worked  there  ha'd  been  epidemics  of 
typhoid. 


200  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


A  still  more  remarkable  feature  of  the  life 
history  of  the  typhoid  bacillus  has  recently 
been  made  public.  A  typhoid  epidemic  was 
traced  to  a  nurse  who  had  attended  cases  of 
typhoid  fever,  but  had  never  suffered  from  an 
attack  of  that  disease,  and  yet  was  discharging 
large  quantities  of  the  bacilli.  These  cases  can 
be  explained  only  on  the  theory  that  these 
microorganisms  find  some  place,  possibly,  as 
has  been  suggested,  in  the  gall  bladder,  where 
they  find  food  sufficient  to  keep  them  in  an 
active  state  of  multiplication,  but  where  the  con- 
ditions prevent  the  absorption  of  the  toxins 
they  excrete. 

How  far  these  curious  incidents  in  the  life 
of  the  typhoid  bacilli  are  common  to  other 
bacilli  is  not  known;  but  if  it  is  true  of  other 
infectious  diseases,  the  fact  will  explain  the 
origin  of  those  obscure  and  mysterious  cases 
that  occur  without  any  known  exposure  to  the 
infection. 

IN  concluding  this  inquiry  as  to  the  nature  of 
infection  and  its  effects  on  the  body,  the  fol- 
lowing statement  of  a  biologist  as  to  the  bac- 
terium seems  justified :  "When  it  enters  a  living 
body,  it  aims  directly  at  the  destruction  of  the 
latter.  It  multiplies  rapidly,  tends  to  scatter  its 
broods  throughout  the  tissues,  and  all  the  while 
gives  off  the  most  powerful  poisons.  This  agent 
is  wickedly  implacable,  neither  giving  nor  ask- 


THE  OCCULT  POWER  OF  FILTH  201 


ing  quarter.    The  battle  that  it  wages  with  the 

body  can  terminate  only 
Bacteria  Aim  to  by  the  destruction  of  one  of 
Destroy  the  Body    the  combatants." 

Viewed  in  the  light  of  the 
past  history  of  infectious  diseases,  this 
is  not  an  overdrawn  picture.  If  we  esti- 
mate the  deaths  from  smallpox  in  an- 
cient times,  from  cholera  in  modern  times, 
and  from  tuberculosis  (consumption)  through- 
out all  time,  the  destruction  of  human  life  by 
bacteria  cannot  be  overstated.  The  bacterium 
has  been  a  wickedly  implacable  foe  to  the  hu- 
man race  in  the  past.  Invisible,  intangible, 
everywhere  present,  it  has  proved  omnipotent 
in  its  destructive  attacks  upon  communities. 

But  our  century  opens  with  a  far  brighter 
outlook  for  the  race.  Elementary  forces  which, 
through  ignorance  of  their  true  functions  in  the 
economy  and  conservation  of  nature,  were  per- 
mitted in  the  past  to  expend  their  energy  in  the 
destruction  of  life,  have  been  revealed  by 
science  to  be  man's  most  helpful  agents  in  the 
promotion  of  comfort,  health,  and  longevity. 
Electricity  was  for  ages  only  a  thunderbolt,  an 
object  of  terror,  and  an  agent  of  destruction, 
visiting  the  human  residence  only  to  kill  its 
owner  and  burn  the  structure. 

To-day  the  same  natural  force  is  man's  most 
obedient  and  humble  servant,  quietly  visiting 
his  home  to  furnish  him  heat  and  light,  annihi- 


202  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

lating  time  in  the  transactions  of  business,  and 
transporting  him  from  place  to  place  as  on  the 
lightning's  wings. 

So  the  bacterium,  once  the  terror  of  mankind 
as  the  invisible  and  apparently  unknowable 
cause  of  devastating  pestilences,  proves  to  be 
the  useful  purveyor  of  the  by-products  of  man's 
digestion  of  waste  matter  which  is  thereby  con- 
verted into  food  for  plants.  It  visits  man  in  the 
pursuit  of  its  humble  calling  to  obtain  his  con- 
tribution to  the  sum  total  of  plant  food.  It 
searches  every  tissue,  every  organ,  every  recess, 
however  obscure,  but  so  stealthily  that  its  com- 
ing and  going  and  its  immediate  presence  are 
not  known  if  absolute  cleanliness  of  the  body 
exists.  It  is  only  when  dying  tissues  or  organs, 
or  accumulations  of  dead  matter,  are  found  that 
its  presence  becomes  known.  Even  then  it 
would  prove  harmless  and  its  presence  would 
be  unrecognized  if  its  excretions  of  plant  food 
(toxins)  were  not  necessarily  absorbed  and  did 
not  enter  the  circulation,  thus  poisoning  the 
body  it  is  relieving  of  dead  matter. 

BRIEFLY,  what  are  man's  defenses  against 
bacteria?  Chiefly  two,  viz.,  first,  killing  it 
by  depriving  it  of  food;  and,  second,  killing 
it  directly  by  what  are  known  as  germicides. 
The  first  method  is  effected  by  cleanliness  of 
the  person.  It  may  be  affirmed  that  cleanliness, 
without  and  within,  absolutely  protects  every 


THE  OCCULT  POWER  OF  FILTH  203 

man,  woman,  and  child  from  the  most  common 

disease-producing  bacteria. 

Man's  It  is  not  sufficient  to  keep  the  skin 

Defenses    clean    by    daily    baths,    while    the 

mouth,     nose,     throat,     and     other 

internal     surfaces     and     organs     are     covered 

or  filled  with  effete  matter.     We  must  be  every 

whit  clean  if  we  would  escape  the  results  of 

the  scavenging  processes  of  bacteria  of  some 

variety  or  species. 

That  condition  can  be  secured  and  main- 
tained in  an  organism  that  itself  is  constantly 
decaying  in  all  of  its  tissues  and  organs  only  by 
strict  compliance  with  the  natural  laws  govern- 
ing the  operations  of  the  body  as  an  independent 
organism  in  which  all  of  its  forces  tend  to  pro- 
mote its  health  and  conservation.  Every  tissue 
and  every  organ  has  its  special  means  of  re- 
newal of  its  tissue  by  the  removal  of  dead  par- 
ticles through  the  outlets  and  the  reception  of 
fresh  material  through  the  inlets  of  the  body. 
Waste  and  supply  are  exactly  balanced,  as  in 
the  most  precise  and  delicate  machine.  If  the 
outlets  become  clogged,  so  that  all  the  waste 
cannot  escape  at  that  proper  time,  dead  matter, 
the  food  of  bacteria,  begins  to  accumulate,  and 
disease  must  result. 

In  the  same  manner,  if  the  food  is  in  excess 
of  the  demands,  or  of  a  quality  not  suited  to  the 
needs  of  the  tissue  or  organ,  waste  begins  to 
accumulate,  bacteria  swarm  in  the  decomposing 


204  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 

mass,  and  emit  their  toxins,  which,  absorbed 
into  the  circulation,  cause  a  variety  of  physical 
disturbances  according  to  the  species  of  bac- 
teria present,  and  the  particular  tissues  the 
toxins  affect,  as  the  nervous  system,  stomach, 
heart,  kidneys,  etc. 

That  even  the  most  feeble  minded  may  be 
able  to  regulate  their  habits  so  as  to  secure  an 
adequate  supply  of  food  both  in  quality  and 
quantity,  and  the  prompt  removal  of  waste 
matter,  so  as  to  secure  that  degree  of  cleanliness 
of  internal  organs  essential  to  escape  from  bac- 
terial attacks,  the  mechanism  of  the  body  is  en- 
dowed with  instincts  that  make  it  automatic  in 
its  action.  Such  are  appetite  and  taste  for  food 
and  drinks;  the  desire  for  exercise,  rest,  and 
sleep;  the  impulse  of  the  organs  in  an  active 
state,  etc.  It  is  only  when  these  natural 
monitors  are  interfered  with  that  the  mechan- 
ism begins  to  fail  in  its  elimination  of  waste, 
and  bacteria  find  the  conditions  favorable  for 
their  functional  activity. 

PIE  second  defensive  measure  is  the  destruc- 
tion of  the  bacteria  by  means  of  agents  that 
will  destroy  the  microorganism  before  or 
after  its  entrance  into  the  body,  but  without  in- 
juring the  healthy  tissues.  There  is  a  great  va- 
riety of  these  agents  of  more  or  less  power,  and 
they  are  used  in  the  form  of  gases,  liquids,  and 
powders,  according  to  conditions  existing  in  in- 


THE  OCCULT  POWER  OF  FILTH  205 


dividual  cases.     In  general,  it  may  be  advised 
that,  as  bacteria  are  everywhere. 
Destroy  the        germicides  ought  to  be  used  far 
Bacteria  more      extensively      than      they 

are  for  the  purposes  of  se- 
curing not  only  the  direct  destruction  of  bac- 
teria, but  of  removing  or  neutralizing  dead  mat- 
ter, the  food  of  bacteria. 

So  minute  are  bacteria,  and  so  adherent  are 
they  to  material  things,  that  mere  bathing  with 
water  does  not  remove  them,  medicate  it  as  we 
may  with  fancy  soaps.  There  should  be  used 
in  addition  a  more  penetrating  and  destructive 
agent,  which  would  not  only  destroy  all  forms 
of  bacteria,  but  at  the  same  time  secure  absolute 
cleanliness. 

IT  would  be  impossible  even  to  summarize,  ex- 
cept in  a  volume,  the  vast  number  of  so-called 
germicides  that  have  been  brought  to  the  at- 
tention of  the  public  for  use;  but  in  the  practice 
of  surgery  the   chief  reliance  is  placed  upon 
those  agents  which  simply  oxi- 
The  Value  of     dize   organic  matter,   and  thus 
Germicides        destroy  the  germ  without  injur- 
ing living  tissue,  as  do  all  forms 
of  caustic  preparations.     The  saving  of  life  by 
these  new  measures  far  exceeds  that  effected  by 
simply  removing  the  material  that  contains  the 
germ,  without  destroying  the  germ  itself. 

It  is  impossible  to  estimate  the  resources  of 


206  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


science  in  its  efforts  to  discover  the  ultimate 
conditions  that  govern  the  origin  and  spread  of 
all  the  pestilential  diseases;  but  its  revelations 
during  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  are  a 
prophecy  and  a  promise  that  the  whole  brood 
of  domestic  contagious  and  infectious  diseases 
will  disappear  during  the  present  century  from 
the  homes  of  English-speaking  people;  largely 
because  the  lessons  of  cleanliness  are  being 
learned,  not  only  the  lessons  of  cleanliness  of 
the  home,  but  also  personal  cleanliness  —  a 
form  of  cleanliness  that  is  more  than  washing 
with  soap  and  water,  —  that  kind  of  cleanliness 
which  kills  germs,  removes  the  substances  in 
which  they  live,  and  disinfects  and  makes 
aseptic  and  healthy  the  surrounding  tissues. 


VIII 
A  Closing  Word 


ILEANLINESS  is  indeed  next  to 
Godliness,"     is     an     oft-quoted 
saying  of  John  Wesley.     Bacon 
stated  the  maxim  thus:  "Clean- 
ness of  body  was  ever  deemed 
to  proceed  from  a  due  reverence 
to  God."     The  Hebrew  Fathers, 
from  whom  this  sanitary  principle  was  derived, 
resolved  the  doctrines  of  religion  into  "Careful- 
ness; Carefulness  into  Vigor- 
Cleanliness  Next     ousness;    Vigorousness    into 
to  Godliness        Guiltlessness;      Guiltlessness 
into     Abstemiousness;     Ab- 
stemiousness into  Cleanliness;  Cleanliness  into 
Godliness." 

This  religious  creed  was  doubtless  based  on 
the  Mosaic  sanitary  code,  and  was  the  pre- 
ventive measure  against  pestilences  which  the 
great  Jewish  law-giver  approved.  How  gen- 
erally and  how  long  the  "Chosen  People" 
adopted  and  practised  this  method  of  protection 
against  epidemic  diseases  does  not  appear,  but 
it  is  quite  certain  that  in  later  days  it  had  been 
discarded. 


(209) 


210  THE  CITY  THAT  WAS 


THE  Hebrew  Fathers  could  have  had  no  con- 
ception of  the  invisible  agencies  in  filth  that 
made  uncleanness  such  a  powerful  factor  in 
the  propogation  of  epidemic  pestilences  and 
domestic  contagious  and  infectious  diseases.     It 

was  reserved  for  the  scien- 
Invisihle  Agencies  tists  of  the  recent  past  to 
in  Filth  discover   the   exact   nature 

of  the  infective  germs  of 
communicable  diseases,  their  origin,  their  de- 
velopment, their  modes  of  infection;  in  other 
words,  their  life  history. 

This  discovery  revealed  the  fact  that  filth  in 
every  form,  whether  in  the  rubbish-heap,  the 
toilet,  the  garbage,  the  dust  of  the  floor,  or  even 
in  the  folds  of  the  hands  and  feet,  the  secretions 
of  the  skin  and  glands,  is  a  culture  bed  for  germ- 
producing  diseases.  The  secret  of  the  great 
power  of  cleanness  as  the  true  remedial  meas- 
ure for  the  prevention  of  pestilences  is  now  ap- 
parent and  every  citizen  must  recognize  that  the 
obligation  of  applying  that  remedy  rests  with 
himself. 

The  Great  Awakening,  in  the  middle  of  the 
last  century,  of  the  people  of  England,  and  sub- 
sequently, of  this  country,  to  the  intimate  re- 
lations of  filth,  in  all  forms  in  and  around  their 
dwellings,  to  the  prevalence  and  fatality  of 
cholera,  typhus  fever,  and  other  communicable 
diseases,  has  restored  cleanliness  to  its  ancient 
imperial  position  as  chief  of  the  virtues,  and 


A  CLOSING  WORD  211 


the  most  reliable  private  and  public  means  of 
conserving  health. 

THIS  awakening,  due  both  in  England  and 
America  to  trivial  incidents,  forms  one  of 
the  most  interesting  chapters  in  human  his- 
tory.      Already    the    outcome    has    been    an 
enormous     reduction     of     the     mortality     of 
English-speaking  peoples,  an  im- 
A  Higher         mense  increase  in  the  length  of 
Civilization       life,  and  an  advance  in  the  arts 
of  living,  which  insures  a  higher 
civilization  by  securing  to  every  citizen  a  sound 
mind  in  a  sound  body. 


DATE  DUE 

NOV  1  I 

1988 

MAY 

'  1  2on7 

»      K,%J{J^ 

GAYLORD 

PRINTEDINU.S  A. 

BOSTON  COLLEGE 


3  9031   01533718  1 


RA 
447 

.N7 

N5 


SMITH,    Stephen* 


Bapst  Library 

Boston  College 
Chestnut  Hill,  Mass.  02167 


